20. Deputy John Connolly asked the Taoiseach when the Cabinet committee on health will next meet. [34058/25]

Sentiment score: 0.00

The healthcare sector is one sector of our public service that relies heavily on attracting and recruiting practitioners and staff internationally. In 2024, 6,000 of the 17,000 critical skills permits provided by the State were in the health or social work sectors, 5,031 of which were for nursing staff. In 2023, the OECD said that 54% of nurses working in Ireland had trained in other jurisdictions. The equivalent figure in the UK was 18%. I harbour a guess that many of them are probably Irish. I arrive at two conclusions from this. First, we are not training an adequate number of healthcare professionals, in particular practitioners and particularly nurses. Second, nurses particularly are choosing post qualification to seek opportunities in countries other than Ireland. Both of these conclusions need to be interrogated.

Sentiment score: 0.01