Mr. Paul Reid:

The Deputy is correct that the primary care centre in Tallaght is one of the exemplars with regard to multidisciplinary working and particularly its effects in terms of keeping people out of hospitals and emergency departments. It is the model we want to see across the board. I am happy to come back to the Deputy with regard to plans for a primary care centre in his own constituency area because there are very significant plans as to the further roll-out of primary care centres and the procurement of land to facilitate this roll-out. I am happy to come back to him with specific regard to his constituency to give him an understanding of what the plan is or where the gap is.

On the impact, the Deputy is correct. I am glad that he highlighted something we have not said here today. People sometimes get frustrated when we say this but the impact of the Covid pandemic has been significant across our health system. When we look back on it, we might have done things differently. We will always look back on things in that way. However, the impact on resourcing was significant. We had to scale up a system of testing and tracing involving more than 3,000 people and a vaccination system involving more than 5,000 people. It was a project of a very big scale that had to be done at very short notice. That did impact on resourcing and we had to redeploy staff for periods. Having said that, we were anxious to get our school therapists back as quickly as possible. Once we recruited into those areas, that is what we did, but the Deputy is right; it did have an impact.

I will ask Mr. O'Regan to speak on the CDNTs and staffing levels in a moment but I will first make a general point on recruitment. Our process is to recruit at a local level to the greatest extent possible and to delegate power to the CHO areas to do that, which they actively do. At a central level, we have put in place a new recruitment model to give us that scale. We have never before recruited an average of 6,000 people per year but we have done so over the last two years. That is net recruitment. As I said earlier, we have recruited a total of 35,000 people. Our model involves a new recruitment model, further delegated powers to recruit at a local level and the use of a third-party agency. I will ask my colleague to respond on the issue of CDNTs and staffing complements.