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

Can I move on to another issue? It is the whole challenge we now have at primary care level as regards GPs. We have a large number of GPs over 60 years of age and as to forward planning, it is not just for next year but for the next five to ten years.

As for the issue of keeping as many people as possible out of the hospital system, one of the big complaints from GPs is the lack of support staff they are able to employ. Can that now be reviewed so that we make greater use of GPs in delivering services? They can do that if they have additional support staff. I am wondering if that is being reviewed by the Department of Health at the moment.

The other issue is how to get more GPs to stay in the Irish system and how to train more people. I believe we have more than 350 people going into training each year so how do we encourage that? There are more than 5,000 GP vacancies in the UK. We do not want to end up in that scenario so how do we deal with that issue?