John Crown (Independent)

Prior to the recess, Senators were summoned to consider emergency legislation to deal with the shortage of medical person power which had emerged, despite the country having the highest number of medical schools per head of population of any western or OECD country. The House was compelled to pass urgent legislation in order that we would be able to recruit or, as some would say, plunder doctors from two of the most medically under-served populations in the world to keep our health service functioning. The two countries in question are India and Pakistan. While I supported the legislation through gritted teeth, I considered it indicative of a profound and long-term failure of planning that we could find ourselves in such a Ballymagash-like position in which several days before the end of the mandated contractual deadline for young doctors, we had been forced to fundamentally re-jig and re-order the processes we had in place for the assessment of doctors coming to practice in the State.

I echo the contributions of colleagues in calling on the Leader to please urge the Minister to come before the House to have a little chat with Senators about a number of issues relating to the health service. On a specific issue, it is important that a report be furnished to the House outlining what was the disposition of the recruitment process, how many doctors were recruited, how many came here and how many passed through it. It is being reported in the lay press that many of the young doctors who came are still not working because, we are told, the documents they were required to provide were not in order. I suggest it was incumbent on those importing doctors from such medically starved areas to this country where, apparently, many of them are appropriately being supported, fed and sheltered, even though they are not yet able to work, to ensure the necessary documentation was in place before they arrived. It is another extraordinary failure of planning that this has happened.

This is a microcosm of a larger problem. As I have stated previously, it was very depressing to read that in August, traditionally the quietest month in the health service and the time when trolleys are empty, the number of patients on trolleys was higher than at any time in five or seven years - I forget the exact period. This is a desperate warning that when the winter-----