Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

No, I am not: I am disputing the Deputy's understanding of them. It may well be the case that 11,000 nurses have left the service in the past five years but it is also the case that 6,000 nurses have come into the system. As such, the net reduction in nurses is approximately 5,000 but this has further reduced to 4,500 because the number of nurses increased in 2014. As I said, this is partly offset by the current record number of doctors and midwives in the system, nurses working additional hours and the graduate nursing programme. The number of nursing hours done is not necessarily the same as the number of nurses employed.

There are approximately 34,000 nurses in the public health service. If 1,000 of them leave this year, that equates to approximately 3% of the overall number. A 3% turnover in staff in any organisation is not enormous. It is manageable. A particular issue, as mentioned by the Minister of State, Deputy Kathleen Lynch, is that mental health nurses can retire at 55 years of age, although they do not have to do so. We are encouraging them to stay on. Also, the HSE's latest recruitment campaign for nurses had almost 4,000 applicants. There are people who are willing to work in our services.

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