David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein)
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That falls short of a lot of the targets we set in our document. That is my point: we need to get better and we need to get sharper. I welcome the fact that there will be additional staff but we need much more robust targets and to get much better at this.

I want to put one final question to Mr. Reid about staffing. I am looking at the Be On call for Ireland pool. I have been contacted by a number of organisations, including Diabetes Ireland, the Irish Heart Foundation and the Irish Dental Association. They have spoken about very specialist staff, namely specialist nurses, occupational therapists and speech and language therapists, who are seconded, I imagine for the right reasons, to testing, but they need to go back into doing their jobs as well.

The number of people currently in the Be On Call for Ireland pool who can be hired is 1,600 in total. A total of 68 medical laboratory aides have not been offered any work at all. In fact, there were 98 originally when they first responded and approximately 30 dropped out. The pool also includes 78 occupational therapists and 27 medical scientists. There are staff, therefore, who could have been employed through that pool, yet they have not been. When the HSE is recruiting, is the Be On Call for Ireland pool being used to fast-track appointments?