Mr. Anthony Owens:

The Senator said one of the key aims should be to keep doctors here and I hope we are not frightening his friends from UCC. There is also the question of restoring allowances and making work more attractive.

When we talk to non-consultant hospital doctors, NCHDs, typically, they tell us the issues are working hours, access to protected training time, support for training and training funding, family-friendly policies and reasonable working hours. Those are the non-salary issues that would incentivise doctors to stay in Ireland. As Dr. Sadlier said, if we were training people comprehensively, they would not leave Ireland. They are going, in part, because they are not getting the training here that they need.

In that regard, we recently agreed with the HSE a programme called the training support scheme, TSS, which will put a figure of approximately €10 million per annum behind NCHD training. It is applicable to all NCHDs regardless of whether they are on training schemes.

The Senator mentioned allowances. That arose from a High Court case on the living out allowance, which was abolished. That scheme is up and running now. It is not a silver bullet in that it will not make everything as it ought to be but it will help. The scheme is currently in place and we did much work with the HSE to get it in place. It was money we had to get and put behind training.

There are many measures we can take to do with working hours and, for example, family-friendly policies. Some people on training schemes are sent all around the country. They may have a spouse who is based primarily in one location while they travel around the country in pursuit of their training. Two doctors may be in a relationship and one is sent to one end of the country by a training programme and someone is sent to the other end by a training programme. These are the issues we should be thinking about resolving. They are not easy to resolve but it should be done.