The Taoiseach says the Government is trying to recruit people to address the staffing crisis in our hospitals and our health services. The pay and numbers strategy proves that he is speaking out of both sides of his mouth on that issue. Setting that aside, however, if we are to recruit the people we need into the health service, we need to make it attractive for people to train as nurses and midwives and allied health professionals. As I have highlighted a number of times in this Dáil, in Scotland, a student nurse or midwife, or someone in allied health professional training, gets £10,000 a year as a bursary to train. There is a real incentive to do nursing and midwifery or to study to become an allied health professional. Here, student nurses and many other people, including the allied health professionals, face massive financial barriers and get very little financial assistance for transport, their accommodation costs and so on. Will the Government introduce a serious bursary of the sort available in Scotland for our student nurses and our allied health professionals who are trying to train in order to address the staffing crisis in our health service, the waiting lists, and the crisis in our CDNTs, CAMHS teams and emergency departments?

The Deputy can absolutely always argue that we can and should do more regarding the number of people working in the health service. What he cannot dispute is the fact that there are now significantly more people working in the health service than there were only a few years ago. There are actually 27,744 more people working in the health service now than when this Government came to office, including 9,185 more nurses and midwives, 4,160 more health and social care professionals and 3,479 extra doctors and dentists. We can have a debate about health, but let us not pretend there are fewer people working in the health service than there were a few years ago. There are significantly more.

Let us not pretend there is not a staffing crisis.

There can be only one set of facts.

Thank you, Taoiseach.

No. Excuse me for saying "No", a Cheann Comhairle, but the Deputy asked me an important question and it deserves an answer. On the issue about how we better support our student nurses, I am open to having engagement on that. A number of measures have been taken by the Minister, Deputy Donnelly, as regards improving the supports and subsistence, and it will be a matter for a future government after an election to see what more can be done.