Dr. Peadar Gilligan:

Let us get those back in circulation. However, again, resourcing is required in that regard.

When primary care teams function, they function extremely well. The concept of the GP, practice nurse, physiotherapist, occupational therapist, psychologist and podiatrist all working together for the patient is terrific, but they have not been resourced to the extent that they need to be throughout the country

That needs to happen because we do not have the sort of numbers we need.

Deputy Durkan and I debated the per capitaexpenditure previously and the fact that we are spending a lot of money on health care. We see 1.4 million patients each year in our emergency departments. There are between 18 and 20 million patient attendances at GPs, hundreds of thousands of procedures are performed around the country and there are hundreds of thousands of outpatient visits each year. That is a costly. My concern, which I have expressed previously, is that when we talk about per capita expenditure, we are talking in terms of out of pocket expenditure, insurance premium expenditure and the Government expenditure component. The Government expenditure component is not adequate and that is the only strategic spend we have within the health system. We need to get that right. We need to resource the system such that patients can have confidence that they will receive safe care.