Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I have one final question which gets to the nub of the dilemma. How great is the willingness within the Irish Medical Organisation to campaign for targeted extra resources to attract people into real rural areas? We need to forget about the petty urban areas, as I call them, places ten or 20 miles from a major city. That is a challenge not only for the Health Service Executive but also for most of the representative organisations. The unions, doctors' and employers' organisations tend to be urban-centric. When one targets the real rural areas, the cost of giving the little extra funding to compensate for distance factors, smaller numbers and so forth is actually small. This is particularly the case when dealing with scattered and declining populations. Does the IMO have a problem within the organisation in getting agreement that there should be targeted extra resources for real rural areas?