Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Deputy certainly deserves an answer in respect of the cost of using a recruitment firm and I will undertake to get that answer for him. I had not directly seen the query but now that the Deputy has brought it to my attention, we will follow up on that and revert to him.

When we talk about HSE recruitment, Be On Call for Ireland and the like, we have to look at the total number of people who have been hired through the different doors and routes. I do not want to use up all the Deputy's time but, for example, some people who have applied for Be On Call for Ireland might also have directly applied to the HSE's national recruitment campaign, which hired 1,412 people. We hired 1,082 student nurses and midwives as healthcare assistants, that is, not as students but as healthcare assistants. We hired 80 additional medical scientists, we rehired 98 other people, and we hired 926 new doctors. We have 1,976 people who have been successful at interview for Be On Call for Ireland and will now be placed.

When I add up all the figures I read out, it brings me to a total of 4,574 additional people who have been hired or are in the process of being placed as a result of our recruitment campaign. Thankfully, we have not needed everybody in the way we thought or feared we might, but we will still need additional people for non-Covid care.

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