Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

That makes an awful lot of sense, not just for medical scientists but right across the board. Probably the single biggest challenge we have in terms of the ongoing modernisation of the public health service is recruitment. If we are going to have a challenge, it is the right one to have. The funding has been allocated and the posts have been sanctioned but we are trying to recruit a huge number of people in a very short period of time. In community care, for example, we have sanctioned 3,500 health and social care professional posts. We have around 1,800 in-post or about to be deployed now. There has been a huge increase but it does lead to pressures right across the system when we are trying to hire so many people. There has been a net increase since 2019 in medical scientists of around 6% but that said, we do need to understand why people leave, either for other jobs here in the private sector or for jobs abroad. We also need a process through which that can be addressed.

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