Colm Burke (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State. I fully accept a serious effort has been made with the MacCraith report, but I am very concerned that while the report set out a huge number of recommendations, it is not clarified how many of the 25 recommendations have been implemented. Perhaps we could get answers to this. I thought the MacCraith report would resolve many of the issues, but we are not resolving them and, in fact, we are going backwards. I am extremely concerned.

Another issue which has arisen to cause further problems is the number of doctors coming from abroad is not as plentiful as what it used to be because Ireland is no longer seen as an attractive training location for junior doctors from abroad. They have other choices such as Australia, Canada and New Zealand and we are not competing for them. We have a major challenge. If we want to reduce hospital waiting lists we need to have enough people at the front line to be able to do so. We have a problem with junior doctors, and because we have a problem with them we now also have a problem with recruiting consultants. This is something that needs to be given priority by the Department.