Dr. John Farrell:

We have worked very closely with the IMO, particularly over the past two years during Covid. Our role in this is as the education body, for people who want to pursue a career in general practice and the education around that. That is our job. That is what we do. We realised when we put forward this Shaping the Future document that we could not do this on our own. That is why we asked for, and included in the document that we needed, the input of the IMO. We are not the experts on that . We are not in charge of looking at the contract. We are in charge of education, training and the continuing professional development of our members. This came from the board of the ICGP. We realised at the very start this had to be a discussion document. It was not a proposal. Coming in front of this committee today, we were hoping we would have its support for putting forward that the Minister's strategic review would take place quickly, because there are major problems, and that there would be a time limit put on that.

All the people mentioned such as the IMO and the HSE would be involved with that. There would be an executive-type group that would come forward with practical solutions to what is clearly a huge problem. I go back to the point I made earlier that this is not about GPs and GP services. This is about patient care.