Mr. Michael Kelly:

I understand completely the anxiety with regard to improving our chances of recruiting more psychiatric nurses, psychiatrists and other staff to the mental health service. As Mr. Duffy has mentioned, the decision to stay with a particular employer is multifactored, as is the decision to leave. When we look at the impact of the moratorium, at one level it reduced numbers but for the people who remained it left a more difficult work situation. When we look at the responses of people, some out of the workforce, some still in it and some people working abroad, with regard to their perspectives on working in the Irish healthcare system, the one thing that comes through consistently is the personal and professional pressures overcrowding and understaffing put on individual practitioners. Part of the solution to this is to try to get the service right. Much work, including the work of the committee, is being done on this. There is a catch-22 here because if we do not have the people it is difficult to do it. The various pieces of this must happen in tandem.

Deputy O'Loughlin asked about subsidised housing. That would be intuitively attractive in certain geographic areas with a particular shortage but no matter what way we disguise it, it would be part of a remuneration package. There is nothing wrong with looking at it but it needs to be looked at as part of the wider spectrum of issues that need to be resolved. Hitting at one issue in isolation will not solve the underlying problem.