Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

One of the many problems of the health service in Ireland - I do not know whether the Cabinet committee or the Cabinet has had an opportunity to discuss this - is the dysfunctional recruitment of doctors within it. We now have one of the lowest numbers of doctors per head of population in the EU. At the same time, we are increasingly relying on the recruitment of doctors trained outside of Ireland and coming to this country. Within a few short years, the service has become dependent on a category of junior doctors, most of them foreign trained and on the lower rungs of their medical careers. Ever more healthcare is delivered not by consultants or trainees who are in secure career structures, but by an ever-growing army of non-training scheme doctors. This is unfair to those in the medical profession who want to work as doctors and who have a completely uncertain career path, so much so that many of the foreign doctors ultimately end up going to the UK or other countries where, having gained experience in Ireland, they can get a career path in those countries.

My understanding is that there is a draft Health Service Executive report on this problem of recruitment which ties in with all the other problems the health service is experiencing but has a significant impact on patients and their families in terms of their access to care, waiting times, appointments, etc., in hospitals and service facilities around the country. Has the Taoiseach discussed this draft report?

Will the Taoiseach make a commitment to the Dáil to publish the report so that we can have a discussion? We do not want doctors in Ireland to be in a version of the gig economy, developing a career in Ireland, either because they are from Ireland or they have come here to work, only to find they are caught in a completely dysfunctional system.

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