Rose Conway-Walsh (Mayo, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The Minister spoke about people not leaving the country. I will give him an example from the small, remote, rural area of Belmullet in which I live and from the Mullet Peninsula in County Mayo. More than 50 young people have left to go to Australia alone. Those are the facts, and he can check them out with his local people. Many of them are nurses, doctors and other clinicians we badly need here. It certainly gives me no joy whatsoever that this is the situation we are in. I obviously welcome an all-island approach. I firmly believe in a national health service based on need and not on ability to pay, but I also believe we need the workforce planning to be able to facilitate that. What is happening in the context of further and higher education and health is, as the Minister knows, that the former is so underfunded. I think €309 million was the figure agreed in respect of further and higher education because it was so underfunded. Many foreign students are coming in. They are very welcome, but we also need to make sure that we have the workforce we need here and that the clinical places are available. The other Minister is saying that there are not enough clinical places available to produce the workforce we need.

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