Dr. Madeleine Ní Dhálaigh:

It is really just to elaborate on what Mr. Moran said. A practical example would be that waiting lists have huge ramifications for people in the community and GPs providing care. As I mentioned earlier, if a person who is, say, a plumber, carpenter or in gainful employment has a sporting injury or otherwise at the weekend and comes into us with a cruciate ligament tear or some sort of injury that is going to impact their ability to continue their work and if they do not have private healthcare, they are looking at a two-year wait before they are even seen and given treatment. They are out of the workforce. It does not make any sense at any level and certainly on a human level, it is absolutely atrocious.

What we are doing as GPs is managing them by managing their pain and helping manage their disability if they cannot access physiotherapy in a timely manner. Our physiotherapist colleagues are excellent but there are just not enough of them. That adds a clinical burden on to GPs but it is also very difficult from an emotional labour point of view for GPs to have to witness this terrible bottleneck in the hospital system, which is not the fault of our hospital colleagues; it is the system's fault. A root-and-branch review of that has to happen.

Another example of this is our young scoliosis patients. Thankfully, I do not have anyone at the moment with that condition but I have GP colleagues who are absolutely at their wits' end trying to support these young people in pain who just cannot access timely care. It is awful. From a GP point of view, therefore, the professional and emotional labour from watching that and trying to manage it is immense.