David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

It is important that we welcome the contract and attract more consultants. In tandem with that, though, I have been hearing from consultants for many years that they need more access to hospital equipment, including diagnostic equipment, and surgical theatre capacity. We will ratchet up the number of consultants working in our public system, but many of the current cohort are battling as we speak to get access to precious surgical theatre capacity. This is an important issue.

We need to consider consultant packages, by which I mean ancillary staff such as nurses, healthcare assistants and junior doctors, surgical theatre capacity and hospital equipment, including public diagnostic equipment, in which I would like more investment. There must be a plan to put in place all of this infrastructure so that we can get bang for our buck and have the capacity in our public hospitals that we want.

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