I have raised the issue of public health nurses in my constituency on a number of occasions and I thank the Taoiseach and the Minister for Health for their engagement on same. However, in my area funding has been made available for six public health nursing positions and these are still in a recruitment process that has lasted months. How does the HSE currently measure the time it takes to fill and recruit for a position? Are those tracked as key performance indicators, KPIs, and are those KPIs reported to an external body such as HIQA or the Minister? How are they monitored and what is the overall target timeline? Across our health service where the Government makes funding available for these positions, I sense there is an issue with recruitment for those positions. Target timelines are a way to get to the bottom of that and ensure efficiency and effectiveness in filling those positions.

I thank the Deputy for raising this. I have raised it with the board of the HSE and with the chief people officer of the HSE who I will meet shortly to better track where the difficulties are. It is not always a difficulty of the HSE. Sometimes it is simply difficult to get candidates and certainly on the public health nurse side we have had to increase the incentives in a number of different ways to try to recruit more people but it is something, in a general sense, I am watching carefully and I appreciate the Deputy raising it.