Dr. Pádraig McGarry:

With regard to what Dr. Sadlier highlighted, namely, the type of health service we want, by and large, the vast majority of the costs in general practice are taken up by GPs so if we say that we will have a general practice service that is fully funded by the State, the actual amount required is exponentially more than what is currently there. As Dr. Sadlier said, what service model are we going to go for because that is not clear? If the Government decided tomorrow that it was going to run a fully State-funded general practice service, I do not think the State could not afford it. I have certainly not seen any appetite for going in that direction within the HSE. However, we hear from other sections that this is where we need to go if we are to implement Sláintecare. Deputy Durkan asked a question to which, unfortunately, there is probably no straight answer. We are not prevaricating. There are a lot of variables that do not allow us to give a straight answer to that question.