Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Yes, it is. One of the big groups we will rely on to work in this way, for example, who typically are not on the five-seven contracts yet, are the health and social care professionals. My view is that as part of the upcoming round of pay talks, certainly from a health perspective, that is something at which we would be looking.

To the Deputy's point, a lot of the workforce are already on these. Junior doctors and many nurses already have contracts like this. The new consultant contract moves from rostering 40 hours per week to 80 hours per week. Really, it is about pulling the service together to do all this.

We set up a working group led by the former chief the South-Southwest Hospital Group. That has been established within the HSE to put a national framework together for how we achieve this. The Deputy will be aware that the chief executive asked for this on a voluntary basis over the coming weekend, which is exactly the right thing to do.

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