Colm Burke (Fine Gael)

I wish to follow up on a matter raised yesterday by Senator Whelan on the shortfall in the number of junior doctors. He mentioned his area of Portlaoise and the midlands in general. My information is that there will be a shortfall of 450 junior doctors on 1 July. In other words, 450 places will not be filled. I understand this has come about as a result of centralising the applications system with little consultation with the people who manage individual hospitals. There has also been late advertising of posts. In addition, people coming from outside the European Union need to sit an examination to determine if they have adequate English. While everyone accepts that is very important, there is a delay in holding those examinations for those who are successful in getting posts. The training status has been removed in many junior hospital doctor posts. As a result, people are not even applying for the vacancies that exist.

I want the Minister to come to the House to explain how he proposes dealing with this matter between now and 1 July. I quote from an e-mail sent to me yesterday:

This centralised process has been a fiasco for niche jobs in small services such as ours. Medical Manpower continue to have their head in the sand despite increasingly frantic concern expressed by myself and others... over the past few weeks. We are either ignored or fobbed off with extremely brief emails indicating that they are just about to advertise. When we initially pointed out that they had overlooked our service and its posts about six weeks ago, we requested that we be permitted to advertise & recruit locally ourselves. We were refused such latitude.

With 450 posts going unfilled from 1 July, this issue needs to be addressed and the Minister needs to come to the House to explain how it will be done. We also need accountability regarding the people who made the mistakes in centralising the application process with delays in dealing with the job applicants and the advertising of the positions. It is an important issue that needs to be dealt with immediately and I ask that the Minister would come to the House in the next few days to give an explanation.