Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Wednesday, 25 January 2017
Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health
Emergency Department Overcrowding: Discussion
1:30 pm
Mr. Liam Woods:
The Deputy referenced emergency department consultants, where the number is 80, the need to grow that and where we are with that. There were six additional approvals in 2015 and we are still recruiting four, such is the timescale to attract senior clinicians. We acknowledge fully that we need more emergency department consultants. The constraints on that are related to recruitment and, when we look forward, it is probably about the capacity programme and targeted investment in specific sites to grow capacity there. Does Ms Fitzgerald want to add anything?