We were told never again would residents in our nursing homes be abandoned like they were earlier this year. There is a situation in the west, however. I have spoken to the proprietor of that place. They have been begging in desperation for the HSE to help them for the past two days. They have not received that help. One nurse has been on call looking after 28 residents for 72 hours. Unfortunately, one of those residents passed away while others are being transported to hospital.

The Tánaiste might not know the individual details of this case. As Tánaiste and a former Taoiseach, will he tell me what systems are in place when an outbreak like this infects a large number of residents in a nursing home? What happens when a nursing home, pleading for help from the HSE for the past few days, only has one nurse and care assistant to look after all its residents, along with two other ancillary staff to prepare and serve food? What is going to be done? These residents, as the nurses have said in desperation, are somebody's father or mother. They need care from the State but it has abandoned them at their hour of need. What is going to be done?

Thank you, Deputy. I will come back to you later. It is normal for the leaders to be given an opportunity. I will come to Deputy Naughten in a minute.

Deputy Fitzmaurice raised this issue only moments ago. I do not have any information about the particular nursing home but I will certainly look into it. I will contact the HSE personally and see what can be done.

I might broaden it out because, obviously, we are aware of the same issue.

There seems to be an issue as regards recruitment. I pointed out last week that there are 200 fewer permanent nurses in the system than before Covid and there are 1,800 more temporary or contract nurses. We also have issues with contact tracing and with nurses in the community, as pointed out by two previous speakers. There is a commitment, however, to 8,500 new healthcare professionals to be recruited by the end of this year, 12,500 by the end of the HSE winter plan in April, and 16,000 by the end of next year. There have to be issues beyond just the recruitment process of the HSE, to be fair to it. What are the issues? I represent the constituency that has the Garda vetting unit and I do not believe it is a vetting issue. What are the issues across the board with recruitment that are causing these blockages? We must call a spade a spade. Are we really going to have 8,500 healthcare professionals recruited by the end of the year, 12,500 by April and 16,000 by the end of next year?

As I understand it, since the start of the year, the number of people working in our public health service has increased by 5,000, a pretty big increase in any given year. This comprises approximately 800 extra nurses and midwives, as well as 800 extra doctors. We now have more doctors and more consultants working in our public health service than ever before. Up to 1,600 therapists and allied health professionals have also been recruited. It is true that there may be people on different grades and different contracts. Overall, however, the healthcare workforce has increased considerably in the past couple of months.

On the budget, provision has been made to hire approximately 8,000 additional healthcare staff. It is an ambitious target but it is time to be ambitious, quite frankly, when it comes to scaling up our health service. It is one that the Government is committed to achieving. The funding is there. The Government needs to ensure that we really drive the HSE to make sure that commitment is honoured.