Rose Conway-Walsh (Mayo, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Regarding workforce planning, will the Minister request the Taoiseach to convene a group of senior officials, led by the Minister's Department, that would pull together all the relevant Departments to target training in health and social care? It is really urgent that we join the dots between the provision of third level places and the workforce planning issue. It has not been done properly for many years and we are bearing the brunt of the consequences of that in terms of front-line staffing. The Minister said extra staff have been recruited by the Department of Health, but many of those staff are not front-line workers, although some of them are. With advances in medicine happening all the time, we will continuously need proper workforce planning, whether for 12 months or for three, five, ten, 15 or 20 years, if we are to get this right.

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