Colm Burke (Cork North Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the guests for their presentations and for all the work that continues to be done during the Covid pandemic. It was not easy for practices. There was an increased volume of work that had to be done. It has been much appreciated.

I was in the UK four years ago looking at GP practices. While there, we were advised that the practices we were looking had reduced the waiting time for seeing patients from 14 days to eight days. There was one practice that had 20,000 patients where all the GPs resigned on the same day. None of the adjoining practices would take on the 20,000 patients so the local hospital had to hire doctors to cover the needs of those patients. I hope we will never go down the road here where there would be a waiting time of 14 days for a person to access a GP. It is a commitment of GPs here in that they have been able to provide a comprehensive service to their patients. Therefore, it is important that they get the additional supports to provide that service.

A number of people raised the inadequate number of support personnel, particularly nurses and care assistants. One of the challenges we will have is the availability of a sufficient number of trained nurses, even if we wanted to increase the number of nurses. Is there a proposal to train people as care assistants so that a sufficient number of people would be available within a short timeframe?

My second question is about primary care centres. The figures I have state that 127 primary care centres were built by 2019 - I do not have up-to-date figures - and at the time, there were another 70 in the pipeline. Is sufficient work being done on that, especially in major centres of population, to provide the necessary supports to GPs to come into primary care centres and, at the same time, on the co-ordination of other healthcare providers, such as physiotherapists, counsellors and all the support mechanisms needed in the community?