Dr. Madeleine Ní Dhálaigh:

I agree that we do, but at the risk of repeating some of the points we made earlier, it should not take a lot of time to increase staff subsidies within practice, and to give us more flexibility around how we use those subsidies. We want to attract our emigrated personnel back and encourage our highly trained personnel not to leave in the first place, in conjunction with attracting people who had have not trained in Ireland who are high-quality professionals from internationally. This is absolutely something I would be very interested in looking at.

Points were made earlier about increasing subsidies for staff and making that more flexible, supporting our young GPs in making the decision to join partnerships, and a mentorship model. None of these need a long run-in time. This could all happen very quickly if the will was there. During the pandemic we saw that when there was a will for the HSE to make changes, things happened overnight. Locally, our primary care centre was converted into a clinical hub, built and ready for action within ten to 14 days. When there is a will within the HSE we saw how it worked, they went ahead and did it. Give us the subsidies, give us the succession planning, give us the mentorship, and give us the retirement planning. Then people will be attracted back and people will be attracted to stay. I believe that this should be our starting point.