Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The short answer to the Deputy's question about whether we have had engagement with the Department of Health is "Yes". The most intense area of engagement, to be truthful, has been around places in medicine. As I said in answer to an earlier question, it is the job of my Department to try to respond to the workforce planning needs of other Departments. It is not my Department's job to say we need X number of doctors or Y number of social workers. Where other Departments and agencies come forward and say there is a need to train more doctors, nurses and so on, we will work with them on that. It is only right and proper that we do so because creating a college place will not fix the issue; there must also be a matching clinical placement.

I am very pleased with the level of engagement we have had from the Department of Heath, particularly around medicine places. I expect to be in a position to finalise a significant increase in medicine places for this September. Better than that, we are also working to form a view on where we will get to over the next five years in terms of increasing medicine places to a sustainable level. Similarly, the Department of Health has been very helpful around nursing training and the work done by the chief nursing officer in this regard.

I am almost out of time. We are also doing some work on exactly what the Deputy referred to, that is, lifelong learning. We have people working in our nursing homes and caring for the most loved people in our lives, including our parents and grandparents, but we have often not academically recognised the brilliance of the work they do. Last week, we launched a new apprenticeship programme for healthcare assistants to enable them to get that recognition and to access a career pathway that may not have been available to them to date.

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