Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Deputy Boyd Barrett raised the issue of the recruitment of nurses and doctors. I introduced the nursing degree programme when I served as Minister for Health. At the time, it represented a very radical transformation of nursing education, and I put enormous resources into it in order to create the new facilities we have in universities and institutes of technology across the country. Those changes were informed by nurses and the nursing unions. During the period in question, the Department brought in nursing personnel who headed up the nursing unit and engineered the proposals around this dramatic reform, which meant that students moved from the apprenticeship model within hospitals and to instead being students at third level. That changed the model entirely in terms of payments and so on. That was signed up to by the INMO and all of the parties concerned. We transformed postgraduate nursing education and created far more opportunities for nurses. I understand that things move on and that advances are made. However, it should be acknowledged that enormous investment went into that reform and most people did not think it could happen, but it did and on my watch.

The current situation has been under negotiation by the INMO and the HSE at the appropriate fora for quite some time. I wish the matter had been brought to a conclusion, but the various asks have been be made. It is now part of the industrial relations process and has to be resolved through that process.

The postgraduate medical programme was an innovation which was sought at the time so that people would be given an opportunity to pursue medicine. I acknowledge the Deputy's point that it is expensive, but, as a programme, it has been effective for many people who had previously been debarred from going down the medical route. They can now access the postdoctoral process.

The legislation on the increase in the pension age to which Deputy McDonald referred will be published very shortly. It has gone through Cabinet and will remove any increase in the pension age to 67 years. We will take a more consistent approach than the Sinn Féin Party has taken in Northern Ireland-----

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