Mr. Val Moran:

The Deputy has raised a number of issues. I will touch on the NDTP report. The 1,260 figure is based on under-18s coming in but that is on a standstill basis without any retirements. Again, the number is much higher and is probably in excess of 2,000 the number of retirements is taken into account.

Universal GP care needs to be done. Of course it is a laudable ambition but there is absolutely no point in replacing one barrier, which is cost at the moment, with another, which is time, if we are going to create waiting lists within general practice. At each point it needs to be examined to see the effect on capacity. At the moment we are saying we have 0.69 GPs per 1,000 of the population and the NHS, which has its own issues, has 1.1 per 1,000 and, therefore, we would need to significantly boost capacity before we could do that. Would it be possible in that timeframe? "No" is the answer because we simply do not have the capacity in the system at the moment.