Anne Rabbitte (Galway East, Fianna Fail)
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I thank everyone for their presentations. I have a few questions for Ms Mannion. "Within certain grades" was one of her comments. What grades are the HSE failing to fulfil? She then referred to black spots. Do they relate to sourcing and recruitment? Will she elaborate on that?

Regarding the recruitment of non-national nurses, people who have applied to work in the country but who cannot even get a visa or their qualification certified. Perhaps Ms Mannion or Mr. Hughes could explain. Approximately 100 non-nationals are waiting to come to work in the State.

I do not mean to be flippant in the way I am going to ask this next question. How often do all the witnesses sit in the one room together and thrash out policy and strategy?

I thank Mr. Hughes for his detailed graph regarding the 500 nurses. It is welcome because it gives us a clear understanding of the matter. Does that then go through 25 different hands before the end is reached? Are there 25 different steps to the recruitment process?.

Dr. O'Hanlon stated:

The failure to fill consultant psychiatrist posts is severely undermining the quality and the quantity of the psychiatry service that can be provided to patients. The Irish health services' uncompetitiveness in recruiting and retaining consultant psychiatrists is the fundamental problem which need to be addressed far more than recruitment processes.

There is a message in that. Will he elaborate?

Finally, he said the number of consultant psychiatrists per 100,000 population was the fourth lowest of 26 OECD countries. Are we still the fourth lowest?