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

I do not believe the Deputy is correct to say that we are seeing a haemorrhaging of staff. As I mentioned earlier, we have many thousands more teachers employed by the State every year and perhaps part of the reason it is difficult to find teachers to cover substitution is that they are being hired into permanent positions. The solution to substitution might be asking more retired teachers to come back and cover supervision and paying them to do so rather than looking for younger teachers who used to be on temporary contracts or working hours who now have full-time positions.

We are certainly having difficulty recruiting in nursing. Nonetheless, we have the fifth highest number of nurses per head in the western world, which is a significant statistic that many do not know, and we have more doctors and midwives hired in the health service than ever before. There is not a haemorrhaging.

That is not to say that there is not a difficulty recruiting in some areas, particularly health care and certain parts of the Defence Forces. We have asked the Public Sector Pay Commission to examine that specifically.

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