Michael McNamara (Clare, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the emphasis on primary care. There is a great new primary care centre in Ennis. The Minister for Health, Deputy Stephen Donnelly, opened it. I welcome that, but there is a shortage of GPs right across Clare and right across the country. It is increasingly difficult, as I highlighted to the Taoiseach, to get an appointment to see a GP in Scarriff. That will be exacerbated by the new arrivals of persons seeking international protection and persons with temporary protection because no additional resources are being provided. There are difficulties in Newmarket-on-Fergus. We had a meeting about it last night.

That all means that I was getting phone calls from constituents during Christmas last year saying they could not get a GP anywhere, they had been told not to go to hospital, they had nowhere to go and they had a sick child, and asking what should they do. There was nothing I could say to them. I suppose what I am looking for is an assurance that this will be solved and that in eight years' time we will not be blaming the Government or the Minister for Health of the day for not solving the problem. Is it resources? Is it organisation? Is it a waste of resources because we can predict rises in population, rises in birth rates and rises in life expectancy?

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