Mr. Damien McCallion:

The gap in numbers will, by the end of the year, be somewhere in the of 400 to 500 depending on success in terms of mental health services.

Mr. Reid has mentioned nursing and medical staff. In addition to trying to increase the number of placements which takes time, that has been done over recent years. We discussed this at the joint committee yesterday and we can share that information with the Committee of Public Accounts, across areas like psychology, medicine and nursing both within mental health services and in the wider context.

The other area where we have a lot of challenges is in the multidisciplinary teams, which were referred to. That is occupational therapy, physiotherapy, speech and language therapists, and so on. Similar to nursing, we are trying to introduce an international campaign around that. So that includes attendance at job fairs in other countries and working with agencies to attract people into Ireland in addition to trying to increase the number of people coming through the third level system for those qualifications but we recognise that will always take time to increase. We are trying to address that now. Those multidisciplinary resources are really important for mental health, disability and, indeed, our primary care teams, which we are trying to grow. That is probably one of our most challenging areas at the moment.