Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I accept that pay is one issue and there are others, and that has been highlighted by the Public Service Pay Commission, but it is the Minister's Department that is effectively the human resources, HR, agent for Government. He and his Department need to take the lead in concentrating on these issues. He needs to pull the HSE in and ask why we are losing the best graduates we have to offer and why representatives of hospitals from all over the world are flying in to recruit them before they leave college. If there are other issues, it is the HSE's fault, but the Minister is the overall HR guardian of Government employment, and his Department needs to step up and start challenging other agencies in this regard. Again, I put it to him that the money being spent on travelling around the world to recruit people for public service jobs for which we have graduates here is surely money that could be better spent within our health system or within a system of keeping people working and keeping our best graduates, in whom we as a country have invested enormously, working for Irish services.

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