Ms Anne O'Connor:

There are a couple of different points I would make in that regard. We have a way of advertising panels. For example, we advertise for senior occupational therapists or basic grade occupational therapists for which people apply to a national panel. They are then interviewed and, if successful, placed on a panel. A person might be placed second on a panel and be offered a particular job but within a local service, there might be people who are further down the panel and who do not get prioritised by virtue of their position on the panel. Many services feel they do not get to control who comes in to their areas, albeit we have to have a level of transparency because of our recruitment licence in terms of how we operate panels. That said, we are very much looking at how we can have a local and a national approach to recruitment that would help to rectify some of the challenges the Deputy raises.

In terms of posts in general, there is some challenge around having sufficient posts allocated. We are here today talking about children's disability services but on another day we could be talking about child and adolescent mental health services, CAMHS, mental health, primary care services or children's services in hospitals. All of those services will draw on the same cohort of qualified professionals. This year, we are approaching all graduates and we are looking at a national campaign and an overseas campaign because we have a lot of posts. As mentioned by Mr. Reid, there has been unprecedented recruitment in the past couple of years. We hope to continue that this year. The reality, as we have said before, is we are in a global market and many of our graduates want either to leave to work abroad after college or to work a year or two and then go abroad before they come seniors etc. We are operating in that space, but we are trying to get people in from as many places as possible. As I said, we will be approaching all the graduates in Ireland this year too.