Damien English (Meath West, Fine Gael)
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I move amendment No. 1:

In page 10, between lines 35 and 36, to insert the following:

“ “public health facility” has the same meaning assigned to it bysection 25(5)*;”.

The text of this amendment provides for a definition of a public health facility in order to underpin the new section 25, which will facilitate the annual rotations that are a feature of the contracts of NCHDs without continued recourse to the employment permit system. The amendment will remove 1,500 applications from the system per year. As I mentioned, we are bringing forward a proposal for foreign nationals who take a temporary NCHD job that is not part of a formal Irish Medical Council training programme. The concept is that the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment will issue a two-year multi-site general employment permit for NCHDs in public hospitals and public health facilities, even though their employment contract is for less than two years. The first hospital would not have any legal obligation to employ the person beyond the term of the first contract. This amendment provides the definition for a public health facility that will underpin later amendments to give effect to the proposal, including a new section 25.

We are liaising with our Department of Health colleagues on this definition and will amend it on Report Stage if required. I will also be in a position to provide a definition for a public hospital health facility at that stage. We think this will be of major assistance and has proven to be so in response to the Covid pandemic and the pressure on our system. It will also, on an annual basis, assist more than 1,500 people in these positions. It makes sense to recognise that they might work across different health facilities.