Under the provisions of the Medical Practitioners Act 2007 the Health Service Executive (HSE) is responsible, in cooperation with the medical training bodies and after consultation with the Higher Education Authority, for undertaking appropriate medical workforce planning for the purpose of meeting specialist medical staffing and training needs of the health service on an ongoing basis. Specifically it must assess on an annual basis the number of intern training posts and the number and type of specialist medical training posts required to meet ongoing service requirements. It must also assess on an annual basis the need for and appropriateness of medical posts which are not specialist training or consultant posts. The relevant section of the Act was commenced in 2009 and the first annual assessment, covering the period July 2010 to June 2011 was published in 2010.
The HSE recently published its Annual Assessment of Non-Consultant Hospital Doctor posts for the period July 2011 to June 2012. This comprehensive document includes information on the numbers and types of doctors in training and outlines figures which will guide ongoing specialist training requirements. The report indicates a requirement in 2011/2012 of some 4,000 specialist training posts (563 at intern level, 2,087 at initial specialist training level and 1,374 at higher specialist training level). In addition there are approximately 900 posts required solely for service delivery. This HSE's annual assessment is available on the HSE website at www.hse.ie.