Ms Nichola Harkin:

Recruitment and retention constitute a much wider issue than just pay rates. As we set out in the report, what we need to really address in the challenges in recruitment and retention is the professionalisation of care as a profession. We mentioned things like the national campaign to promote the value and profile of carers and care and a review of the eligibility criteria for State benefits. It is a much wider issue. I do not think it is as straightforward as simply saying it is an issue of pay. We know that collective bargaining does exist in the HSE and there are still recruitment and retention challenges in the healthcare sector across the board so I do not think it is as simple or straightforward as just saying it is about pay and if we resolved that issue, the other challenges would simply go away. We need to look at this from a much broader perspective. As our report states, employers have a role to play in that but so does the Government. We need a whole-of-society approach. It is not a simple fix, unfortunately, and, therefore, we cannot expect it to be fixed by simply dealing with one element. We need to look at this across the board. Dr. McGann may have more to say on that.