Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy. I agree with all he has said. There are several layers to what we are doing. One is prevention. The programme we are now bringing in for children from birth up to seven years of age is really exciting. The second layer is building additional capacity in our public health service, which we have discussed, and the third is modernisation and reform. This is why we are introducing clinical leaders to the system, which we have had not had before, to help with regard to models of care for children and adults. One area in which we need to be open to quite radical action is that of college places and training places. The reality is that we do not educate remotely enough healthcare professionals in our country. We need to see at least a doubling of college places. That would cover both groups of workers the Deputy has described, dentists and dental hygienists. We need to be radical and ambitious in scaling up the number of college places and training places in the coming years.

See this speech in context