Michael Harty (Clare, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Throughout Europe there is a shortage of doctors, particularly in isolated and rural areas. It is probably the most sensitive issue in medicine and it has a knock on effect on the level of out-of-hours cover. We are now proposing to build a health service which will be built on the foundation of primary and community care, but we will have significant difficulties in populating these services because there is such a shortage of primary care professionals, GPs, nurses and therapists. It is a significant problem that many governments do not recognise, even though they want to transfer to a more community based system. They have no realisation of the shortage of personnel.