Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

We need to go very wide on this. People have raised the point there about employment or premises but I was looking at what the Minister has said recently on the shortage of GPs. He starts responses to Dáil questions by stating that GPs are self-employed practitioners and, therefore, may establish practices at a place of their own choosing, that there is no prescribed ratio of GPs to patients, and that the State does not regulate the number of GPs that can set up in a town or community. That strikes me as the Minister washing his hands of responsibility for the provision of an adequate number of GPs, and it is because of that model of self-employed GPs who are private practitioners. We do not need to interfere with that but we need another stream so that the Minister will look across the country, identify the need and essentially take responsibility for the provision of general practice. That is not happening at the moment.