Ms Anne O'Connor:

As to what they do, historically we have had a lot of health centres that we would all be familiar with for different reasons to do with primary immunisation, occupational therapists, physiotherapists, speech and language therapists, public health nurses, etc. When we started to develop primary care centres, we started there, in a sense. The important thing in the beginning was the development of primary care teams after the primary care strategy of 2001. We had groupings of primary care professionals coming together to work in the interests of the local population. From that we started to develop primary care centres. In reality, we have from the beginning had GPs who were very invested and wanted to be in the middle of the teams. We had other GPs who had invested in their own practices and wanted to work in a more virtual way. The priority for those teams was to ensure ease of referral with GPs and to ensure that the team worked and had a weekly meeting with GPs. There have been different models throughout the years.

Some GPs just do not want to be in the middle of a primary care centre. They want to be in their own practice that they have invested in and which is their own business.