Pádraig O'Sullivan (Cork North Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for coming in this evening. I also thank the Ministers of State, Deputies Rabbitte and Butler, for previously taking questions on behalf of the Minister for Health. Some day I might get lucky and he might be able to get here in person to debate these issues.

Our health services are stretched. That is evident in the significant waiting lists in various areas within health. The pandemic has also taken its toll on the workforce and there are significant backlogs on foot of the pandemic. We are facing a cliff edge of GP retirements in the next few years. Many employees are approaching retirement and that is going to create significant challenges for staffing. There are also many younger professionals looking for better working conditions and a better work-life balance. These are all issues the Department of Health and the HSE are juggling. We are also reliant on agency staff in many areas, particularly nursing. Despite all this, we are repeatedly told money is not an issue. That is evidenced by the record budget of €22 billion we had last year. It is an inescapable truth that the HSE is recruiting record numbers of staff. That is a fact. Unfortunately, that recruitment is not keeping pace with demand, the backlog and the waiting lists we are all familiar with. There are difficulties in recruiting consultants, nurses, particularly specialised nurses, therapists and psychologists. There is a significant inability to recruit in those areas.

I have a accumulated some statistics over the past few weeks through responses to parliamentary questions. With regard to clinical genetics in Crumlin and St. James's hospitals, five posts have thankfully been filled but two are vacant. That is nearly one in three posts unfilled. Some 391 Irish doctors were granted working visas in Australia in the last year while 837 consultant posts are not filled on a permanent basis. Nine highly remunerated consultant posts were advertised last year and none were filled. There are 4,787 older people without a carer due to chronic staff shortages. There were five unfilled posts in BreastCheck last year and 63 unfilled consultant psychiatry posts. In the child and adolescent mental health services, CAMHS, waiting lists have increased significantly, by about 23%.

Parliamentary questions always get the same kind of mundane response, detailing long-standing workforce challenges and so on. I was here a number of weeks ago with the Minister of State, Deputy Butler, talking about paediatric patients with type 1 diabetes. The issue there was the delay in getting insulin pumps. Two additional diabetes nurse specialists were advertised in Cork, and one advanced nurse practitioner, but those posts remain unfilled. In 2022, the Cork-Kerry community healthcare area received an additional 14.5 posts for its children's disability network teams, CDNTs. We have no information about any of those posts being filled.

Another issue I raised previously was that of home care workers. At the most recent Cork-Kerry HSE briefing in Ballincollig, we could see from the details presented to us that it takes seven to eight months to hire a home care worker. If I was a home care worker, which is predominantly part-time work, and I was waiting seven or eight months to be told I was getting a job, I would probably have found a different job in that time.

There is clearly an issue here with recruitment. What are we going to do about it?

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