Emer Higgins (Dublin Mid West, Fine Gael)
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102. To ask the Minister for Health the work underway to increase the number of frontline nursing and midwifery staff in hospitals to help increase capacity and improve experiences for both staff and patients. [7974/22]

Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail)
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Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, the health service has been committed to ensuring sufficient staffing levels to meet both COVID-related and long-term healthcare demand. Budget 2021 provided funding to greatly increase the health workforce. Across 2020 and 2021, Nursing and Midwifery staffing has had a net increase of 3,372 WTE. The commitment to building capacity in the health sector was emphasised again in Budget 2022, which provides funding for a further growth in the workforce of up to 141,491 WTE. We are working with the HSE to finalise the numbers to be recruited by staff category for 2022.

In addition to the above, the Strategic Plan for Critical Care aims to increase critical care capacity in Ireland to 446 in the longer term. Available staffing is a critical aspect of critical care provision and is often reported as being the foremost limiting factor in attempts to increase capacity.

A total of €77m has been provided for implementation of the Strategic Plan over 2021 and 2022. This will allow national critical care capacity to increase to 340 by 2023. This funding includes provision for the additional staff required to open these beds, as well as funding to increase the number of places available on critical care nurse training programmes and to recruit additional onsite nurse educators to support training in a hospital setting.

Building on the evidence from the last two years, funding for 2022 has been allocated to support strategic and permanent increase in advanced practice across the system in line with Sláintecare. The Minister has committed to increasing the target of 2% of the nursing and midwifery workforce at advanced practice level to 3% over the next two years. This significant investment in the nursing and midwifery workforce, will enhance patient experiences, as well as offering more career opportunities for nurses and midwives to address population health needs across the system.