Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

It is a really important question. It cuts to the heart of the matter because it is not just about the out-of-hours service. It is about general practice and making sure general practice is fully supported, funded, invested in and configured properly right across the country, including in the Shannon area and, obviously, in Clare. There are a few things we are doing in terms of Covid. I keep hearing from the HSE and the Department that GPs deserve huge credit for what has happened since Covid arrived here. I hear from all over the country that time and again they have stepped up. They reconfigured their practices, moved online and are doing all the Covid calls. A strong view of the clinical community in Ireland is that they have really stepped up, interestingly to the point where some hospital consultants, with whom I have spoken, would have been slightly wary of the investment in and move to community-based care because they believed it would have the impact of a diminution of acute care. As GPs have stepped up and taken on more of that, the hospital consultants are saying this is working out pretty well. There are a few things we can do. One is the ongoing funding for GP Covid calls and the subsequent visits and care, where necessary. GPs have done a phenomenal job to that end.

Another big initiative is e-health. It is one of the silver linings that has come out of Covid. It was well flagged in the Sláintecare report and by numerous people but not much had happened. Over a very short period there has been a massive increase in telemedicine, e-health and so on. In accordance with public health guidelines, general practice has shifted substantially away from the in-person consultations to predominantly telephone consultations. During the emergency patients have shown an overall reluctance to contact their GP about non-Covid issues, which is worrying. It is understood to have changed gradually in more recent months, as people's concerns about Covid have abated somewhat. The area of e-health has benefited from this and significant progress has been made under the objectives of the 2019 GP contract. Much good work is taking place.