Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Okay, we never did it. I will have to check with the Minister of State, Deputy Halligan. I have a recollection that we did decide to join, but I do not know why we did not do it.

I agree with Deputy Curran that it is as much about joining up what we are doing already as it is about resources. In the new contract with GPs we have set aside a €2 million fund, and it is only to get started, dedicated to primary care in areas of high disadvantage. That is a start and we can scale it up. There is a thing in healthcare known as the inverse care law - Deputy Harty will be familiar with it - whereby those people who need healthcare the most are the least likely to get it. Wealthy people can afford healthcare and often have many unnecessary investigations and even unnecessary operations, whereas those who often need them the most get them the least. The answer to it in education is DEIS and we all know how that works, but there is nothing like that in healthcare. Primary care in areas of great disadvantage where people are more likely to die young, smoke, get cancer and be sick gets the very same funding from the State as anywhere else. That is wrong. If we doing a second RAPID or something similar, part of it must be healthcare and a significant increase in healthcare investment in those designated areas focusing on things that make the most difference such as public health, encouraging people to turn up for screening, cessation of smoking and the many things that blight people's health.