Jerry Buttimer (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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As the Minister knows, there is an issue with recruitment and registration of nurses and this has to be changed quickly. The process should take just 90 days but it can, in some cases, now take up to a year. It is affecting all sectors of the health system, be it public or private, the voluntary sector, nursing homes or acute hospitals. As the Minister said earlier, there are vacancies waiting to be filled, particularly in the nursing home sector and in our acute hospitals. This is affecting the patients, their families and the delivery of services. I contend that it should not take beyond 90 days to complete the process of registering a nurse with the Nursing and Midwifery Board of Ireland.

Senator Colm Burke and I have raised this in the Seanad and the Joint Committee on Health and Children, respectively, and we are bringing the NMBI into the committee for the recess because this is a huge issue, especially in the nursing home sector. It is also having an impact on other acute services. I raised the issue with the HSE at the quarterly meeting of the committee, of which I am Chair, and it seems like little or no progress has been made since then. At the same time, I brought up the impact on the HSE of recruiting nurses from nursing homes and asked for interaction with the Nursing and Midwifery Board to reduce the inordinate delays in registration. In response to my question the HSE said the main difficulty with expediting timely applications, as reported by the NMBI, arose partly from a delay failure by the applicant and third parties to furnish the necessary documentation required to assess eligibility for registration, and partly from the overall volume.

It is all too easy to blame the applicant but I do not believe for one moment that every applicant can take such time as to create the delays we are now witnessing. I have met people from private hospitals, nursing homes and nursing organisations and I cannot comprehend it. Is it a matter of administration? Does the NMBI have the proper resources to do the job? If it does not, let us make sure it does because it is supposed to facilitate health services, not impede them. It is in nobody's interest for the current situation to continue as delays in the registration of nurses are having a domino effect. As we discussed with the Minister, in Cork University Hospital there are jobs waiting to be filled and I am told they need to be filled quickly because of capacity and vacancies and the effect on the delivery of services. The current situation means nursing homes and hospitals will not be able to provide services, therefore it is imperative the NMBI progresses registrations as speedily as possible. Administrative procedures should be put in place so that capacity in our health care system is not reduced. We need active engagement to deliver a solution that will solve the problem.

The chief executive of the NMBI, Dr. Maura Pidgeon, has agreed to come before our committee to discuss the issue and I hope the Minister's reply will give us some further hope that we can expedite a situation which is becoming problematic. I hate using the word "crisis" but it is becoming a real crisis when hospitals cannot get nurses because of a situation which we in this House have the power to address.

Kathleen Lynch (Cork North Central, Labour)
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I will be brief. It is fortunate this Topical Issue comes on the foot of the previous one because they are significantly linked. I will not read out the written reply because Deputy Buttimer has addressed most of the points in it, but there are answers in it which may be of interest. Deputy Buttimer knows the difficulty is that nurses who train outside of the country have to register here. I think everyone agrees this should be the case. Their qualifications must be scrutinised to ensure public safety. We are all agreed on that but there are difficulties.

The reply notes that each and every application will be assessed within a maximum of 90 days. Deputy Buttimer has pointed out that is not the case so I am not going to reiterate that fact. What is in the reply that might be of interest to Deputy Buttimer, however, is that there are two remaining HSE adaptation courses available in June and August of this year. These courses are for people who have registered and need to complete an adaptation course. They are six to 12 weeks in duration and facilitate the integration of nurses from elsewhere to nursing in an Irish context. It may be of interest to the Deputy to learn that since the nationally co-ordinated pilot adaptation programme commenced in June 2014, which is just one year ago, 151 candidates have completed the programme, 58 candidates are currently undergoing assessment and 126 candidates are due for assessment up to the final programme in August 2015.

Outside of the current provision for placements in 2015, there are 293 requests for placements by employers and many of them, as the Deputy rightly states, are in the nursing home sector and our own hospital. These numbers are not reflective of a national total as some hospital sites have also run independent adaptation programmes. As the Deputy can see, there are many people who wish to work in this country but simply have not completed the required adaptation course. I advise Deputy Buttimer that the Nursing and Midwifery Board of Ireland has been allocated additional resources to address the issue and I note that having the chairman or the CEO come before the committee is a wise move by it.

Jerry Buttimer (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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I thank the Minister of State for her reply. I am glad she did not read out the written reply; she was quite right not to. I commend her on her engagement with this issue and the previous one. I will stray for one second. The Minister of State, to be fair, intervened in the cystic fibrosis issue in Cork University Hospital and I commend her on that intervention. She did not have to intervene but she did and she got people together, and for that I praise her. I hope she does the same with this matter.

In her reply, the Minister of State speaks common sense. Notwithstanding issues in terms of completion of documentation, which I accept exist, it is becoming too commonplace for this to be trotted out as an excuse. I have met people from the private hospital, acute hospital and nursing home sectors. I have met nurses themselves. Today I met a ward sister in Cork University Hospital who told me of the issue she faced. People are losing out on promotions because of the registration process. We need to resolve this issue and much of it is in our own hands. We can easily solve some of the challenges in the health care sector and I contend this is one of them.

This is about ensuring people are compliant and registered properly. While I accept that, I have a concern about the adaptation courses, particularly in the nursing home sector. I hope we can expedite the application process and that it can be done in a more timely manner. I am acutely aware of the issues and the hurdles to be overcome but if we want to see groundhog day, we need only sit back and do nothing, which is why the committee is bringing in the chief executive. It is not to have an adversarial engagement but rather a meaningful one through which we can find a resolution. This is otherwise a good news story in the health system - we are recruiting people - but as a result of some type of bureaucracy and red tape, we cannot recruit them and get them into jobs. That is surely what we must be about. I hope we can bring a resolution to this issue. I thank the Minister of State for her common-sense reply and praise her for her involvement in the process.

Kathleen Lynch (Cork North Central, Labour)
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When agencies work for the common good, although I think we have lost that concept of the common good, and we have a great need on one side and people prepared to work on the other but there are barriers in their way, there must be a flexible approach in order that we can do things in a more timely and speedy manner while still maintaining public safety. To build up resources to meet demand, we must create that type of flexibility within our systems.