Mr. Fintan Foy:

I believe it is also a philosophical change. Within a hospital the emphasis is on service. Training bodies such as ours are saying that we need to move this philosophy of emphasis on service to training. With training, however, one also gets service. That is one factor.

The Deputy referred to increasing the training numbers rapidly. We must also be conscious of the fact that there are only approximately 1,000 medical graduates coming out of the system annually. It would be very difficult for us to go beyond the 350 GP trainees, which we are targeted to get to by 2026, because we are also competing with all of the other specialties. That is also a rate-limiting factor. Training is not a short-term solution but we are committed to getting our training numbers up to 350 within the next three to four years.