Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail)
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The intern year in Ireland is a pre-registration year required by medical graduates to be eligible for full registration with the Medical Council.

The governance and organisation of intern posts is delivered through the six Medical Schools, who are accredited by the Medical Council to deliver Intern training and are supported by the associated Intern Training Network. Doctors undertaking their internship rotate through clinical sites deemed educationally suitable for the purposes of Intern training through the training site inspection process. The purpose of a training site inspection is to determine and monitor the ability of a site to deliver Intern training in accordance with the current accreditation standards developed by the Medical Council along with the relevant curriculum of training.

The HSE has been informed by the relevant Intern Network that following a recent site inspection (March 2024) Cavan hospital has been approved as a training site for interns. The HSE welcome this development as it aligns with the Model 3 report which recommends that Hospitals that do not have interns assigned or trainees in a number of specialties should work with the relevant training bodies or regulator to meet the requirements to have these posts recognised for training and assigned to their hospital. The 145 additional Intern posts noted in the correspondence were permanently established in 2021, prior to Cavan receiving approval as an intern training site.

I have reviewed further the correspondence received on the matter. The number of intern posts nationally currently stands at 879 and all intern training posts have been assigned for the July 2024 intake. It would unfairly disadvantage existing Intern training sites to redistribute posts at this point in the training year. From a workforce planning perspective further increases in the number of intern posts will continue to keep pace with future expansion of training programmes to ensure a sufficient pipeline of trainees for increases in Consultant and GP posts. This has been noted in the External Review of the National Number of Medical Intern Posts (Crowe Report, 2022) and more recently the Final Report of the National Taskforce on the Non-Consultant Hospital Doctor Workforce (2024).

To expand the number of intern training places in future years additional funding will be required by the HSE. I will work with the HSE through future annual estimates processes to support increases in Intern training numbers in line with workforce planning requirements.