Health Services Staff Seanad Éireann — 2026-04-23 ============================================================ Linda Nelson Murray (FG), Industrial and Commercial Panel I did not know that. It is great to get new information in a Commencement matter reply. It is great that the report will be published on 1 May. I urge the Minister of State to go back to the Minister for Health and let her know that I hope this results in ending the pause on recruitment so that we can keep that worry away from these students. I will finish off by talking about the experience I read of another lady being a medical physician associate in Our Lady’s Hospital, Navan. She started on 23 March 2020, a time we all remember. She said: I had completed my Emergency Medicine rotation and then elective placement ... I loved the team and was thrilled to be asked to stay. The hospital even hired 2 others in my class to be Surgical Physician Associates too! I was proud that the staff and hospital’s first experience of a student Physician Associate was a positive one. That in my time spent there I could prove our potential and that they were interested in pioneering this role in their hospital model. She continued to document her time during Covid and said: I am extremely proud though that I have been present as a Physician Associate on the frontline. That we have been given the opportunity to pioneer our profession and truly represent our practice as competent generalists throughout this crisis. So far our feedback has been really encouraging and we have all been accepted with open arms as valuable members to the team. That is from a physician associate in Navan hospital. It can be seen how critical it is that we have these roles to help our healthcare system across all our hospitals. I thank the Minister of State for coming to the Chamber today. I urge the Minister and the HSE to move from the report and unpause these roles. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-04-23/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:51+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-04-23