Keith Swanick (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I have been liaising with my party colleagues, Deputy Butler and Councillor Murphy, on Waterford hospital. Dr. Heraty recommended that the hospital should be funded for an additional two angiography sessions per week, which would deliver approximately 3,000 more appointments. What is the timeframe for this to be implemented? Will it be later this year or early next year?

I welcome the additional €18.5 million in funding for the primary care strategy and I also acknowledge the work on the development of primary care centres around the country but it is not all about bricks and mortars. It is about the activity that happens within the centres. Bearing that in mind and the serious manpower crisis in general practice, will the Minister consider specific funding for practice nurses in the context of nurse prescribing? There are many inadequacies within our health system in so far as GPs perform nursing duties and consultants perform GP duties. If GPs are considering sending their nurses a on nurse prescribing course, they have to fund it themselves.

Given 90% of all patients are seen in general practice on a day-to-day basis, a specific model to fund practice nurses in nurse prescribing would help the transition of the patient through the system in a more timely manner and would help alleviate the pressures we are witnessing in primary care and it probably would reduce the referral rates to secondary care.