Colm Burke (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

In recent days more than 600 young people who qualified with a medical degree started working in Irish hospitals. I am sure everyone joins me in wishing them well in their future careers. I hope most of their careers will be in Ireland and not in other countries. I welcome that the Minister for Health has announced that by November he hopes to have in place more structured contracts for junior doctors. Having more than 2,000 junior doctors on six-month contracts is not helpful to the system. I urge the HSE to work with all the training bodies to deal with this complex issue which has been left to run for the past ten to 15 years.

I also welcome the Minister's decision on new structures for the hospital system with boards of management managing a number of hospitals in different regions. We should have a debate on the matter in the next term to ensure we are familiar with the structure and that the structure operates.