Mr. David Walsh:

I will comment first on people with chronic illnesses - Mr. Goodman may assist on this - and the system in place for GPs to take on a lot more of the care burden in respect of certain chronic diseases.

With regard to GPs, I accept there may be exceptions but, in general, GPs keep a very close eye on their more vulnerable patients and are probably the best source of data and information in terms of joined-up registers of who is within their locality. The Deputy is correct, however, in that if people are falling through the cracks, we need a means of making sure they are brought back into the system. The same applies to people who are housebound and may not be able to attend their GP clinic. We need to run through a range of scenarios to make sure that people are not excluded by virtue of their condition when, on the face of it, there is all the more reason there should be-----