Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

That is an interesting question from the Deputy. We have been trying to do everything we can possibly do in order to try to reduce waiting times and increase the number of professional places.

A key focus of Funding the Future, our funding plan for higher education, is to ensure that we have an appropriate pipeline of suitably qualified individuals to enable the provision of essential public services in areas such as health and social services, as referred to by the Deputy. This priority is now being advanced by my Department in conjunction with HEIs. It is very important to say that these institutions are autonomous in the context of academic affairs, including the design and structure of the programmes they offer. I wish to reassure the House that, quite rightly, I do not decide academic programmes, their structure or design. This is a very important safeguard of quality, which the Deputy will appreciate. The programmes put in place and delivered by HEIs must also conform to regulatory standards required for professional accreditation. For example, CORU, the multi-profession health regulator, was one of the regulatory bodies and the Nursing and Midwifery Board of Ireland is another, to ensure that their programmes meet relevant standards. Clinical placements are arranged by individual institutions, the HSE and other healthcare providers.

What I can and am doing, to assure the Deputy, is to try to work with other Departments to identify the skills needs. To give one example, we started this with medicine this year where we sat down with the Department of Health. We asked it how many doctors it needs to train. They have given us a number, we will be publishing it very shortly, it will be a multi-annual figure, and we have announced 60 more places from September in medicine. We announced about three extra last year, to give the Deputy an idea of the scale of this increase.

I now want to do the same exercise with the Minister of State with responsibility for disability, and with the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth on speech and language and occupational therapy professionals. I would love to stand say that I can slash a year off the course, but I cannot. What I can do, however, is to ensure that we can very significantly increase the places, and that we train a great deal more people in these areas. I will be happy to engage with the Deputy further on this matter.

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