Dr. Tom Ryan:

The choices are quite wide. North America is wide open for an Irish graduate. It is a huge medical market. It is worth putting the scale of this problem in context. We have approximately 1.1 consultants per 1,000 population. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, OECD, average is 1.8. We are approximately 40% or 50% lower than we should be and many of the consultant posts we have are unfilled, while some are filled by doctors who are not registered as specialists and who may not be qualified to act as specialists. There is an enormous problem here. For us to provide complex, sophisticated healthcare to a contemporary international standard, we will have to greatly expand the number of consultants we have. We cannot even fill the posts advertised at the moment. It is not just the Middle East that offers superior contracts. It is Australia, New Zealand, the United States and Canada.