Mr. Paul Reid:

I thank the Deputy for the question. I will make a couple of points at a general level. In terms of recruitment, the focus on specialist recruitment and on retention, at HSE national level we have created a new recruitment model aimed at streamlining the recruitment process and to give further delegation at local, community, CHO and hospital levels in terms of approvals for recruitment. Separate to that, we have a model that has the support of an external agency in terms of specialised recruitment, sometimes beyond the health service and, sometimes, Ireland. We have engaged a specialist partner as a very new recruitment model. The big challenge for the HSE, which the Deputy touched on, is the issue of retention not just specifically related to community and, in particular, children specialties, but across the board. The HSE has to recruit 9,500 staff every year just to stand still. From January 2020 to January 2022, net recruitment was 12,500 staff. A large number of those went to the community and health care teams.

We have a very significant challenge every year just to stand still. Equally, our retention process largely is about making the health service a good place to work, trying to provide extra supports for our staff in those areas and trying to get the shift particularly into community care and multidisciplinary teams. It is never related to just one specialty. Some of my colleagues might want to add to that. It is also about having that multidisciplinary team approach to give the individual specialists wider supports. As I said, there are a number of initiatives.