Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein)
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399. To ask the Minister for Health the reason workforce planning and assessment was excluded from the health service capacity review 2018; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [17794/18]

Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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Given the timelines in which the Capacity Review had to be conducted in order to inform the new National Development Plan, it was not possible to include a full workforce planning exercise within the scope of the Review. It is important to note that aspects of the primary care workforce were included within the scope of the review, where the key units of capacity were workforce-based. This included GPs, practice nurses, public health nurses and a number of therapy professions.

However, in parallel, a number of initiatives have been underway to enable robust and accurate workforce planning, including:

- The National Strategic Framework for Health and Social Care Workforce Planning, which was launched in November 2017, was developed alongside the Capacity Review. This Framework will support an approach to workforce planning that will enable the recruitment and retention of the right mix of health workers, across the health system.

- Recently I launched “A Framework for Safe Nurse Staffing and Skill Mix in General and Specialist Medical and Surgical Care Settings in Adult Hospitals in Ireland”.  This is a new plan to determine the number and type of nurses needed in each hospital ward around the country.

- Effective workforce planning and appropriate resourcing of health services will be a key enable of Sláintecare reforms. This will be addressed in the Sláintecare Implementation Plan which I expect to bring to Government in May.

These initiatives, in tandem with the findings of the capacity review, will provide a robust framework within which workforce planning and assessment can be undertaken on an ongoing basis.