Hildegarde Naughton (Galway West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses for their excellent presentation here this morning. They outlined clearly their key objectives.

They explained quite well the need for GP access to diagnostics. Could they expand on the structure that they would like? Is it in the primary care setting? We have spoken previously in this committee about diagnostics being in the hospital setting because they are there already and GPs may have access to them, but there could be a conflict. In the longer-term, the GPs may not have the access that they would require and their access would be eroded. How best could we as a committee look at that?

My second question relates to GPs as the first point of contact. The local doctor is the first point of contact for patients with a wide variety of conditions and mental health is a significant issue at present. How would they see this being dealt with in the short and medium to long-term? They spoke about increasing the number of psychologists and psychiatric nurses in the community. How best could we support GPs in their endeavours to deal with mental health?

There is also the issue of GP retention in rural areas. There is an ongoing initiative where trainee GPs are placed in rural practices across the country. What are their views regarding the effectiveness of that in retaining GPs and providing them with an incentive to locate eventually in rural or disadvantaged areas?

Dr. Osborne made reference to the relationship between consultants and GPs. Although he might be able to expand in other areas, I was thinking initially of where there can sometimes be a conflict with patients coming in to a hospital through accident and emergency with a GP referral, how that is taken on board when the patient reaches the hospital, how such communication and relationship could be improved and what he would like to see happen. There are other issues with community care and in terms of preventing users from presenting in the first instance, but the relationship between GPs and the consultants, especially when patients are coming in through accident and emergency, is an important one. Those would be my questions for now.