Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy. I will clarify one point and I appreciate I was not clear. When I say it will take more than one Government to solve some of these problems, I do not mean two Governments over ten years; I mean this Government has a year to run and this problem is not going to be solved within a year. The opening of the new children's hospital next year and everything around that creates a once-in-a-generation opportunity to dramatically improve paediatric healthcare in Ireland and I am determined that should be the case.

When it comes to consultant appointments we have 1,000 more consultants now than when this Government came to office and that is significant. There was a time when the number of doctors per head of population in Ireland was below the OECD average and it is now above it. That happened during my party's term in office. The term "vacancy" as used by the IHCA is a misleading one as when the people at home hear "vacancy" they think empty, thinking that is what "vacant" means. Of course, a lot of these posts are not empty; they are filled by locums, people on contracts or through agencies.

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