Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

If pay were the only issue, it would be sorted by now. However, it is not. Poor working environment is also an issue.

The Minister is right that it is a chicken and egg question. We do need people to come and work in our health service. I note the Minister issued an appeal to graduates. I would appeal to him to make their workplace more appealing and, thereby, encourage more of them to work in our health services. We will not be in a position to implement the maternity strategy or any of the other documents that sit gathering dust on shelves in the Department of Health unless we have the staff to so do. Recording vacancy rates is important because it will identify where we have staffing deficits. While talking about staff turnover and where those staff might be going, the evidence is that staff are leaving the health service to work in the private sector or abroad. We also know that we have a problem with consultants who are practising but are not on the specialist register. I have not seen any proposal to address this. This issue will get worse because a situation will arise whereby they will drift into a legal entitlement to a contract of indefinite duration unless something is done to ensure they are converted.

Will the Minister give the figures on the conversion of agency staff to directly employed staff? If he could give that information in hours it might be helpful.

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