Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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Question 420: To ask the Minister for Health and Children the extent to which the number of nurses currently in training is expected to be adequate to meet future requirements; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [35727/06]

Mary Harney (Dublin Mid West, Progressive Democrats)
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Ensuring an adequate supply of nurses and midwives has been a concern of this Government for some time, and a number of substantial measures have been introduced in recent years. The annual number of undergraduate nursing training places has been increased by 94% since 1998 to 1,880 places from 2006 onwards. There are over 6,000 students in the system at any one time. Revenue funding for the undergraduate training programme is €115m per annum and the Government has provided €250m capital funding since 2002 to build thirteen new schools of nursing. The first cohort of students from the new four year degree programme graduated and registered as nurses earlier this year.

The measures to increase the domestic supply of nurses and midwives are vital to ensuring we have an adequate workforce to meet the needs of the health service going forward. It is expected that the nursing students funded by the Government will meet much of the demand for nurses in coming years. The Government has been successful in recruiting an additional 10,200 nurses (whole time equivalents) into the public health service over the last nine years. It is the responsibility of the HSE to effectively manage the nursing resource. In addition to training additional nurses it is also important that work systems are constantly monitored and adapted to ensure the best outcomes for patients. The increased use of health care assistants and better skill mix will help to ensure that our nursing care teams will continue to be able to deal with the growing demands on the health service. It has to be recognised that health professionals operate within a global labour market and that careers in the Irish public health service will also prove attractive to overseas nurses from EU and non-EU countries alike.

I am confident that the extensive range of measures to increase the domestic supply of nurses together with the more effective utilisation of the professional skills of nurses and midwives and the recruitment of overseas nurses, in addition to close monitoring and assessment of the situation on an ongoing basis, will continue to prove effective in addressing the nursing workforce needs of the health services.