Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Thursday, 2 February 2023
Public Accounts Committee
2021 Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 38 - Health
Health Service Executive - Financial Statements 2021 (Resumed)
9:30 am
Mr. Stephen Mulvany:
Emergency care, as we know, is just a symptom of the problem across the whole system, in both community and hospital care. We cannot solve it in emergency departments. We have to solve it across the entire system, including emergency departments. With regard to our workforce planning around acute hospitals, last year we commissioned, paid for and completed the ESRI study into acute hospital staffing requirements out to 2035. We have a good picture of how much we need to grow the numbers by and what the attrition levels are and, therefore, how much we need to expand the recruitment, training and retention of staff. We have processes in place for each of those.