Mary Henry (Independent)

We should take careful note of two developments. We pay agency fees to recruit nurses abroad and we are not looked on kindly in the developing world for taking their best trained and most intelligent people. We should put a stop to that.

There is also another development we need to carefully monitor. The other day a friend of mine, who was on a panel to recruit an orthopaedic surgeon in a town not far from Dublin, told me that not one Irish national had applied for the post. The Minister of State will remember the emphasis people who were working abroad put on the fact that they want to return to work in Ireland. This is not the first time I have observed that no Irish nationals applied for some jobs. It is because people are not being given the tools to work with or the facilities they need when they return to Ireland. Professor Aidan Halligan will not be the only one to say he will not come back here.