Mr. Andrew Condon:

NDTP, national doctors training and planning, is an administrative unit of the HSE. It was established in 2007 specifically to focus on doctors and doctors’ training. In 2007, the HSE allocated certain functions regarding the regulations of training posts and the number of training posts in the system by the Medical Practitioners Act 2007. The HSE set up a unit of administrators and clinical staff to address that issue.

One of the functions of the NDTP is workforce planning. Another is the negotiation of service level agreements with the training bodies to control the number of trainees, to deal with issues around rotation and quality of training. A third function is providing support to the consideration of consultant posts. If one goes back 40 years to the 1970s, there was an agency, Comhairle na nOspidéal, whose only function was to regulate consultants. It decided whether an application for a consultant post was fit for purpose. That was a statutory function under the Health Act 1970. That function was given to the HSE. Between 2005 and 2008, the HSE did that on its own without input from the wider clinical community, training bodies, patient representatives and so on. In 2008, a committee was set up under the consultant contract, namely, the consultant applications advisory committee, CAAC to which Professor Murray referred. It really is a means of bringing in the wider clinical community and patient community.