Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

Do any of the additional staff in the Department have a special focus on vacancies in front-line services? There are currently more than 100 key promotional front line nursing and midwifery posts vacant in Cork city alone. There are a further 50 staff nursing vacancies in Cork University Hospital alone. To use a phrase that has been bandied about this week, that is not best practice at the best of times and certainly not in the middle of a pandemic.

We have a bureaucratic centralisation of recruitment within the HSE and that is a big factor in the problem. The common-sense solution is for the directors of nursing and midwifery in hospitals to be given the power to recruit where it is necessary on the ground. The questions that arise are when the 150 posts will be filled and whether the Government is prepared to delegate power to the directors of nursing in that regard.

I ask about Covid staffing in the context of a vaccine if, as we all hope, we have a vaccine in the new year. It will take many staff to administer the vaccine and not everyone is qualified to administer such a vaccine. A person must be a nurse or a pharmacist with certain qualifications, for example. There will be an incredible level of demand for it, so surely the Taoiseach does not envisage that it could be administered on the basis of current staffing levels. Special provisions and recruitment will need to be put in place. Has the Government begun to put in place options for that? It is very important that the administration of the vaccine is done through the public health system. We cannot have a position where the administration of the vaccine is less than 100% of what it could and should be through the public health system while private operators charge for vaccines. Will the Taoiseach comment on that?

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