Kathleen Lynch (Cork North Central, Labour) | Oireachtas source

This Government has only been in position for four years but, for the first time ever in this country, we are now developing workforce planning to look at what our staff needs will be in the future and what skill-mix we will need. This should have been done a number of years ago because one cannot plan for the future without knowing exactly what one's requirements will be. I was centrally involved in the negotiations on the unit and it would have been impractical and unreasonable to say in 2012 that we were going to need a certain complement of staff for the unit but that it should be held in abeyance until the unit was opened. That would not have been a very good use of resources.

As Deputy Healy-Rae rightly pointed out, we have a difficulty in recruitment, not just in CUH but across a range of areas, and we are now targeting the very people about whom Deputy Healy-Rae spoke, namely, our young graduates who are ready to go. They will need a degree of supervision, as all new entrants to any profession do, but we are targeting the two groups coming out this year for recruitment. We sometimes forget, however, what it is like to be young. Young people like to travel and we cannot stop them doing that. They gain experience and worthwhile accreditation in other countries. They learn how to do things differently but they do come home and we are targeting that group. Not all of them will want to travel back but we are now targeting those who wish to work for us with a recruitment drive. We are now going to England to target our nurses and to try to bring them back home to work for us.

Deputies must remember that the economy did collapse in a crash. The cystic fibrosis unit we are now discussing should have been built when this country was experiencing a boom, something Deputy Fleming and I have discussed many times. It was not built then but it is there now with the help of Build4Life and we are determined that it will open. We are doing our very best to recruit staff and, on foot of this important debate, we hope that people will hear what we are saying. If they are available and wish to have a job as nurses, male or female, in our service we would love them to work for us. This is not something I dismiss. I have taken an active interest in developments and will continue to do so.

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