Anne Rabbitte (Galway East, Fianna Fail)
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I thank the Deputy for discussing that point. I will share openly with him that I chair our workforce planning and what he said is really important to me. We are trying to increase the number of places. To be fair to the Minister, Deputy Donohoe, and the previous Minister, Deputy Harris, they were really good at increasing places. The point is that if we do not capture them when they are exiting just like that young lady or when they are finishing after their four-year course, we have them lost because they will travel and they might not come back, or they will go into the private sector. I keep saying we need to capture them in the public sector. What is really soul-destroying for me to hear the Deputy say that is I sit in front of the HSE officials and they tell me that they are offering permanent contracts to everybody. They tell me that there is nobody not offered a permanent contract. They tell me that, as we speak, they are running recruitment fairs and telling people, "As soon as you finish, you have a job with the us. Come and work with us. We will even give you that time off to travel and you will have a job to come back to." It is so dishonest to tell me that is the practice and the Deputy is telling about the lived experience. It is dishonest that the model that I am led to believe under which we are giving permanent contracts to people is not happening. As a mother of a child who is going into her third year as an occupational therapist, as any of the people who are putting their young people through college, there is a great opportunity for them at present to seek opportunities in employment but we should not mislead young people either by going to the recruitment fairs and still not honouring that permanency at this moment in time. That is wrong. The parents of that young girl who went to New Zealand would have educated her and would not want to see her go permanently. That is wrong. The HSE will have to answer to this one. Why tell the Minister one thing, which is that we do not have a recruitment embargo and we are offering all opportunities for everybody exiting the class of 2024? Of the class of 2023, how many were given permanent contracts? I am told all and the Deputy has had a different experience. I do not doubt what he is saying.