As I informed the Minister earlier this week, the Fine Gael Party will not oppose this measure. The measure is a symptom of everything that is wrong with the health service.
There are major structural problems in the context of the staffing of the health service. For far too long, those problems have not been addressed. We have been told that the Medical Manpower Forum will bring forward proposals which the Government will consider. The Medical Manpower Forum was originally scheduled to bring forward those proposals by the end of December 1999. Ever since December 1999, whenever I, Deputy McManus or other Members of this House raised questions about when the report will be seen, we were told it will be seen shortly.
I do not know the reason for the delay within the forum. It is rumoured that there are major disagreements within the forum as to the proposals which should finally be recommended to the Minister but it seems that until we see this report, the Minister and the Department are paralysed by an inability to address the major staff difficulties in the medical area in the context of the hospitals.
For a number of months I have been predicting that we will have difficulties on 1 July with NCHDs and that posts will remain vacant. Other Members of the House have made the same prediction. The Irish Hospital Consultants' Association and the IMO issued similar warnings. The only people for whom it seems to have been a surprise are the Minister, the Minister of State and those in the Department of Health and Children.
Right up until the end of May we were being assured that difficulties will not arise on 1 July. As we entered June, we were told there could be one or two vacant posts in anaesthesia. We now know, one working day from 1 July, that there are in the region of 135 vacant posts and it is likely that they will remain vacant. We know there is a major crisis in the area of anaesthesia, that hard-pressed doctors working in accident and emergency units in a number of hospitals will lack the additional doctors and that posts will remain unfilled within those units from 1 July. It is not good enough.
This measure could and should have been brought before the House months ago. Many non-EU junior doctors will have known from the beginning of the year, or at least from March, that their five year temporary registration would be expiring, and they will have made arrangements to take jobs outside the State from 1 July. My understanding – the Minister of State can confirm this – is that no more than 20 doctors may retain their posts or obtain new ones in the State as a result of this provision. The Bill should have been brought before the House months ago to address this issue in so far as it can be addressed. I appreciate that my time for speaking is limited and I have, in the context of comments on this issue elsewhere, listed many of the hospitals which are now in difficulty as a consequence of staff shortages in terms of non-consultant hospital doctors which already exist or will exist from 1 July.
If additional junior doctors are to be attracted to the State from non-European Union countries, it must be ensured that they are shown the respect to which they are entitled and that the conditions under which we expect them to work are reasonable. It is an outrageous and racial discrimination which should not be tolerated that non-EU doctors who have temporary registration, who are given posts in this country on whom our medical services depend if they are to function properly, are not, for the first year they work in this State, allowed to have their spouses and children join them. It is an indefensible provision to have in place. I raised this previously with the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform and with the Minister for Health and Children, and I was told it was being examined and reviewed. I fail to understand why any doctor coming from outside the European Union, who legitimately comes to Ireland to take up a position which has been offered to him, who has temporary registration and has been given whatever visa is required, should be told that he cannot bring his wife and children with him to the State. That is intolerable. Even if there were no shortages, that should not be tolerated.
In the context of the urgent need to recruit additional junior doctors, I urge the Minister of State to speak with his colleague in the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform and ask that this issue be addressed and resolved immediately. If it is, additional applications may be made to come to Ireland by young non-consultant hospital doctors from outside European countries and it is possible that posts which will be vacant on 1 July will be taken up later in July or in August. When foreign doctors from outside the European Union come to this State, there is no reason the job they are offered should not be family friendly. I would love to hear a rational explanation from the Minister of State in his reply as to why we preserve this appalling discrimination. If we were told that people of Irish nationality who took up medical posts in the United States were forbidden to bring their wives and children with them, there would be an outcry. Representations would be made by the Department of Foreign Affairs and we would be looking to friendly Senators and Congressmen to raise the issue on Capitol Hill. I cannot fathom why we keep the provision in place.
I could say much more but I appreciate that this is a brief Bill which briefly addresses an issue that requires to be addressed. The other issue that requires to be addressed is to ensure that we take a radically different approach to our medical education system. A number of doctors from European Union and non-EU countries would come here if they felt that the training they would receive in some of the hospitals which have vacancies would be up to scratch. That is a fundamental issue which professional bodies are taking much too long to address and the Minister of State should kick them into action.
This is the last speech I will deliver in the House as Fine Gael spokesperson on health and children. I have found that I have a great interest in the brief. I was grateful to be asked to deal with health issues. I hope I have raised issues which needed to be raised in a constructive way and that, where I criticised Ministers or Ministers of State, it was understood I was doing so in the context of representing the public interest and seeking to ensure that areas within the health service and relating to child care which I believed were not being adequately addressed would be addressed. I wish the Minister, Deputy Martin, and the Ministers of State, Deputies Moffatt and Hanafin, well in their briefs for the rest of the lifetime of the Government. I hope some of the badly needed reforms in the health service which we regularly debate in the House will be brought to fruition.
I say to the officials of the Department of Health and Children that I have at times been critical of the Department because I sincerely believe it is a Department which needs restructuring, additional resources to provide the type of service necessary and reform of the information technology units. The fact that the Bill was introduced at the last minute is yet another example of the difficulties experienced by the Minister in the Department in keeping track of where crises arise in the health service. I wish the officials of the Department well in their work in years to come.
