Ms Linda Kelly:

My remit is with health and social care professionals but Mr. Jennings may have more to say about safe staffing. Among other jurisdictions, there is nothing that maps straightforwardly to an Irish context, but we can look at key principles. Dietetics, for example, is an area in Ireland where we are very under-resourced because of the embargo in the midlands. There are some counties without any community dietetics service, but safe staffing levels have been developed in the UK. I absolutely believe that there is the authority and ability within this country to get key leaders around a table, from the professional bodies, the unions and the employer, to discuss what that framework would look like in an Irish context, looking at those principles from other jurisdictions. That is not beyond us at all. The problem is that there is a political priority not to do that, because if we were to actually look at safe staffing levels or at a workforce plan, we would find, as the Deputy said at the beginning of her contribution, that the health system is critically under-resourced in respect of staffing.