Richard O'Donoghue (Limerick County, Independent) | Oireachtas source

While I realise that the Minister has opened up new places in research through the Innovate for Ireland programme, there has to be further openings within the postgraduate programmes. For instance, psychiatric nurses have worked for many years in different speciality areas. They could provide therapeutic roles and alleviate huge backlogs in the child and adolescent services areas which currently have waiting lists of 3,914 children. The nursing and teaching areas have merged their work placement programmes very successfully. This has helped with their staff shortages and with the training of extra staff. It has also helped with waiting lists relating to very vulnerable people.

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