Mr. Paul Reid:

Last year our targeted recruitment levels as set out at the start of the national service plan for 2021 was about 16,000. This year it sets out a funded net increase of 10,000. I will look back briefly to where we have been over the past two years. Between January 2020 and December 2021, we had a net increase of just over 12,600 staff in total in the health service. Just for the net increase of 12,600, we have actually recruited 35,000 staff into the HSE in that period. That is about 9,500 staff every year just to stand still, which we call a natural churn. That is people retiring, people leaving the service and having to fill those posts just to stand still.