Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I will speak to amendment No. 5 because the sentiment is not about trying to cod the public about what it voted for in May in the referendum to repeal the eighth amendment. A GP-led service is a service where one rings up and makes an appointment at one's GP clinic. As we move towards Sláintecare, and hopefully we will, it will mostly be in primary care centres located in communities. It could also be in an IFPA clinic or a Well Woman Centre. The GP is the person with whom one makes the appointment but one might need a cervical smear, injection, flu jab or some kind of diabetes check-up and one will often see the nurse. The practitioner runs the clinic and the nurse may deliver the service. The GP still leads the clinical service but another practitioner carries out the administration of the service one has attended for. We all get smears taken by nurses by and large and not by doctors but it is done in a doctor's clinic. I understand, and I think the public understood, that a GP-led service will not necessarily mean one must see the GP. I would have thought the Minister and the Department would welcome the broadening of that definition given the crisis in GP services. There is a drastic shortage of GPs. We also have nurses in clinics who can do this work. Midwives work in Well Woman Centres and for the IFPA. It is sensible to extend the definition now and not later so women can have access to abortion. Otherwise we will narrow access because we cannot get ready access to GPs for normal things like the need for antibiotics.