I want to highlight some difficulties that Irish healthcare students face in accessing clinical placements. A constituent of mine is studying physiotherapy in the Netherlands and needs to complete specific clinical practical placements in hospitals to register with CORU to practice as a physiotherapist in Ireland. She has been trying to line up a placement since February of last year but to no avail. Tallaght hospital has told me it has received 34 placement requests since January 2025 and so far it has only been able to accommodate five of these. In fairness, this is in addition to the placements it gives as a training hospital to Trinity College Dublin. At a time when we are trying to encourage people to join our health service it seems there is a lack of capacity in the training hospital system to cater for demand. What will the Government do to improve capacity to provide clinical practice for healthcare students who are either studying outside the State or at private colleges here that do not have official links?

We are trying to increase the number of healthcare places in the system and we have added 1,100 across therapies, medicine, nursing, midwifery, etc. Placement opportunities are essential for these courses to go full term. I have been working very closely with the Minister for Health on this. The Minister for Health has appointed HSE regional co-ordinators for placements, specifically for this issue, to ensure that each hospital and healthcare facility is supported and makes these places available. Deputy Ahern mentioned that Trinity College has a relationship with Tallaght hospital. One of the issues is that there has to be more flexibility in the system. A hospital may have always had a relationship with a particular institute but it will not always have it and will have to look beyond it. I will pick this up with Deputy Ahern off-line and will engage with the Minister for Health on it as well to see what can be done for this particular student.