Dr. Jenny Mack:

The creation of roles in health improvement would be a good start. Historically, the focus in public health training has been on health protection. That is the case in the majority of specialist training programmes. I am speaking about Northern Ireland. Dr. Kavanagh might be able to speak about Ireland. The majority of the posts are in service development, screening and health protection.

I am quite unique on the island of Ireland in having a role in health improvement public health, but as we know, with the rise in non-communicable diseases and the influence of environmental and economic determinants, we need to have more specialist skills in looking at health improvement policy and the wider determinants. At the moment, the majority of posts do not reflect that. We need to have increased capacity and an increase in the number of jobs focusing on those areas and to have that range of skills.

The Deputy spoke about trapped talent. Those words are important. A lot of students are coming off master's courses in public health and are struggling to find employment. They are highly skilled individuals from medical backgrounds and dental backgrounds who want to work in public health and provide their expertise but they do not necessarily have the employment opportunities and therefore go to other countries. Increasing the importance of the health improvement workforce, increasing capacity and resources and ultimately learning from the UK and opening up public health training to be multidisciplinary has been useful.