Frances Fitzgerald (Dublin Mid West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Minister for Health is also taking an initiative with the National Treatment Purchase Fund to ensure waiting lists can be dealt with more effectively than at present.

It is an extra initiative to ensure that patients' needs are responded to. While I do not have the details, I will ask the Minister to link with the Deputy. Clearly, the focus is on recruitment and there has been a change in regard to trying to recruit more staff on permanent contracts as opposed to agency staff. That may account for the situation the Deputy has described concerning nurses in the local area. I will ask the Minister to come back to the Deputy about that change in regard to the nurses because I do not have the details.

I want to assure the Deputy that the focus is on recruiting permanent full-time nurses who will be in a position to deliver the kind of services he has outlined. Every action is being taken. It is an international problem in terms of trying to recruit and retain nursing staff. The Minister has taken every action possible and has shown as much flexibility as he can in the context of ensuring that we can recruit new nurses.

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