Dr. John Farrell:

We have all agreed that there is certainly capacity issues in general practice. We have identified those and we have gone some way to identify the numbers needed over the next few years. General practice training has come under the remit of the ICGP since October. Before that there were 14 different training programmes that were roughly based around the old health board areas. It is, therefore, only in the past number of months that the responsibility for GP training has come under the aegis of the ICGP.

The structure of GP training means that two years are spent in relevant hospital posts, in the subspecialties, and two years then spent in general practice in a mentorship model learning the ins and outs of general practice on the ground. There are not sufficient hospital posts to accommodate the GP training numbers. That is a barrier to expanding the numbers more quickly and, therefore, we have to engage with the NDTP and other organisations to try to ensure that we have sufficient hospital posts for the first two years of the training of our junior colleagues, and then we have to ensure that there are sufficient trainers to increase. The Deputy is quite correct about the numbers. We have to look at making things a little bit more attractive to encourage people to stay on so that 700 people will not retire and that we can get more people into general practice. There is no quick-fix solution.