Ms Eilísh Hardiman:

To reiterate, workforce and ICT are the two areas we are focusing on in terms of trying to ensure we are able to leverage this capital investment. It is of assurance to us that we have oversubscribing among students coming out of the leaving certificate who want to undertake nursing, which is helpful. Paediatric nursing has the highest points in the whole of the nursing system, sometimes very high points, yet we are oversubscribed. What we have managed to do is demonstrate that we have increased the undergraduate places for paediatric nursing by ten places, which is good, so we have ten more every year cumulatively going through since two years ago. Increasing that again is part of the plan we are talking about in regard to the supply and demand of nursing.

We have also assessed and discussed this with the nurses who graduate. The vast majority, up to 90%, are offered a contract and they accept it on graduation, and we will be doing that again. We have to work very creatively, within a system that is currently very strong on headcount and budget, to try to address that. We have 90 graduates coming out from September to December of next year and we know we need them because we are in expansion mode. It is a question of how to do that and that is a challenge we are trying to work through at the moment.

From evaluating our existing nurses, we know that postgraduate nurses - those that are qualified in general nursing and then do a postgraduate course in, for example, paediatrics - stay longer with us and those courses do not take as long. In our plan for supply, we are looking at how we can increase the number on postgraduate courses. That requires funding and investment because those nurses are not full-time on pay but are 0.5, which means somebody else has to pay for the other 0.5. That is part of the plan we have identified to see how we can increase the numbers.

With regard to accommodation, we have exit interviews when people are leaving the services. Some of them have had to travel long distances and it just becomes too hard to continue doing that from a long-term perspective. Key worker accommodation is something we want.