Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 16 September 2021

Public Accounts Committee

Financial Statement 2020 and Related Matters: HSE

9:30 am

Mr. Paul Reid:

I will take the issue of recruitment and the CFO will cover the €200 million figure. On recruitment, we are anxious to and are recruiting significantly. That was impacted during the cyberattack because we had to cease all applications but since January 2020, we have almost 10,100 extra staff on the books. This year to date we have recruited 4,400 people and that is separate to about 3,000 people who were recruited as part of the testing and vaccination programmes. We have a significant budget to the year-end to continue recruitment. We expect another 3,000 people to be recruited. We wanted that to be focused on nursing and midwifery, as the Deputy said. It is a challenging market right now but since January of last year, we are up almost 1,800 nurses and midwives. We have the budget to the year-end to continue that. We are conscious of those vacancies and are anxious to fill them. It is a difficult market at the moment but we have funding. I will ask my colleague to speak on the €200 million figure.