David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

As I said, it is a laudable objective and one I support. Obviously, there must be dialogue and buy-in from healthcare staff. We need to recruit as many healthcare professionals as we possibly can. Even though additional numbers have come into the health service, the State has not achieved the recruitment targets we set ourselves with regard to the big numbers we need. Obviously, therefore, there are recruitment and retention issues.

I see huge benefit in this with regard not just to acute hospitals but what is happening outside of hospitals and how that will help in terms of discharging patients and alternative care pathways at weekends for patients, particularly older people and those with chronic pain who really should not be going to emergency departments. Sometimes, if the alternative care pathways in the community are not there at the weekends, that adds pressures in our emergency departments, as we know. Diagnostics is another area where we need that seven-day rostering system as well. We need to speed up diagnostics in hospitals. For all those reasons, I want to see this happen. What dialogue there is with the representative bodies? That is the question I asked. Does the Minister have any timeframe as to how we can get to a point where this can be moved on?

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