Members of Fermanagh and Omagh District Council have discussed a response from Minister for Health Robin Swann, which sets out his Department’s Workforce Strategy and the delay in its completion, with one member stating this has fallen short for the last two decades.

The Minister had replied to concerns raised by the Council as to why the strategy is not now due for completion until 2026 and the call for an intervention to deal with the current staff crisis within healthcare.

The ‘Health and Social Care Workforce Strategy 2026 – Delivering for our People’ was published in May, 2018, in response to Professor Bengoa’s Report, ‘Health and Wellbeing 2026 – Delivering Together’.

The Minister explained his Department’s Workforce Strategy “sets the vision for the development of the health and social care workforce from 2018 to 2026″.

He continued: “The aim is to complement the Transformation Programme for Health and Social Care by meeting workforce needs and the needs of our workforce.

“This means we must ensure the service has the right numbers of appropriately trained staff and skills mix and my Department and employers create the right conditions as employers and trainers of choice.”

The timeline has, said the Minister, been impacted by the pandemic but nonetheless still achieved significant progress in a number of areas.

He stressed while ongoing work will be progressed over the next three years: “This will depend upon the availability of significant, substantial and recurrent investment.

“Current levels of funding are wholly inadequate and the one-year funding cycle my Department has had to work under serious constraints [has been another issue].

“Long-term investment in areas such as pre- and post-registration, education and training are required to grow our supply of local care workers.”

Councillor Donal O’Cofaigh, Independent, said: “We asked why it was taking so long for this [strategy] to become a reality.

“It’s notable the Minister grounds this on the Bengoa Review, which I believe is a blueprint for privatisation and rationing of our NHS.

“All parties have obviously signed up to it, but we’re not seeing any meaningful implementation for another four years.

“It seems the stopgap is to recruit [for medical staff] in Third World countries, robbing them of their medical professionals.”

Councillor Josephine Deehan, Independent, told members: “I absolutely accept it is essential we have proper workforce planning.

“We see many of our services directly threatened by the lack of appropriately trained personnel.

“Unfortunately, workforce planning in the past two decades has fallen short of what is necessary to deliver safe services in our locality and, indeed, throughout the North.

“This Council should redouble its efforts to address the workforce crisis in primary care.”

She proposed writing back to the Minister, requesting him to put immediate resources into primary care.

Sinn Fein’s Councillor Sheamus Greene seconded this, adding: “We have opened a medical school in the West and I’m led to believe 70 per cent of entrants are international students.

“I keep making that point. Until the proper number of people from the North are being trained in the North, there will always be a shortage of doctors.

“That is solely down to the Minister for Economy, and Minister for Health.

“They need to get it sorted, and they have been told that for years and still nothing has been done.”

The proposal passed without dissent.