Dr. David Gibney:

Some of the barriers are to do with cost, no uniformity around cost and who pays what. It seems that different people pay different amounts moving into primary care centres. We were in an older health centre which was lucky enough to be under the national agreement, created under the John O'Connell deal, where no rent was to be charged to GPs working in groups who worked in health centres. We still work under the aegis of that agreement which we had when we started off. We have heard statistics about one GP for 2,500 in deprived areas compared with 1,600. My practice size is 2,500 but we can employ 1.6 doctors because the rent is not an issue. There are ways of attracting people into primary care centres. In areas of blanket deprivation it is different from areas of more scattered deprivation. In areas of blanket deprivation it is very useful to have everybody co-located. It can work differently but that model is useful.