Colm Burke (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I also welcome the Minister and thank him for dealing with this matter.

I have a concern about a vacancy that has arisen at Beaumont Hospital where Professor David Hickey was a consultant for many years and provided an excellent service in carrying out transplants. I understand he has retired and that a second consultant who worked at the hospital has returned to the country. The number of transplant consultants has been reduced to four in total when it should be eight, which means that we have a major problem.

In the past six months the figures for transplant procedures were presented on a number of occasions to us at the Joint Committee of Health and Children where comparisons were made with the position in Norway, which has a population of 4.8 million, of whom only 370 are on dialysis. In Ireland there are over 1,800. A transplant saves the Exchequer in the order of €750,000 in real terms, which is a huge saving for the country.

The appointment of consultants is an issue about which I have been concerned for some time. Last October, at the Joint Committee on Health and Children, I asked representatives of the HSE a question, only to be told in reply that there was no information available at a national level on the number of posts which were vacant. At the time I advised the HSE that if it was to give me the name of one porter in each hospital around the country, I was sure I would be able to obtain the information. It was a further six months before I eventually received a list which indicated that there were over 300 vacancies.

This issue dates back to the time of Comhairle na Ospidéal which was subsumed into the HSE in 2004. When Comhairle na Ospidéal was in place, a vacancy would have been flagged by a health board at least 12 months in advance, advertising would have taken place and the post would have been filled as soon as the vacancy arose. We now seem to have a policy of advertising vacancies only after they arise. There is a lack of long-term planning, which seems to be the case at Beaumont Hospital. Responsibility for filling the vacancy seems to lie with the HSE, Beaumont Hospital and the Department. What we need is clarity. We must decide how to fast-track the filling of the post and how to make it attractive enough for someone to apply from abroad if there is no one available in Ireland to fill it. A candidate may be Irish, but at least such a process would ensure the post was filled and thus allow us to meet the target for the number of transplants to be undertaken in this country.