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

In some areas, they are having difficulties getting GPs to work nights and weekends. In fairness, these are all people who are working from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. or 6 p.m. Then, they would have to face another 12 hours of being on call. That is one of the difficulties we are having in many areas.

There is another problem that was raised by the Irish College of General Practitioners, which was before the health committee recently. There is now a huge number of general practitioners who are over 60 years of age, and they are going to retire in the next five to six years. The question is how we meet that challenge. The Irish College of General Practitioners has now started training of non-Irish doctors who want to practise here as GPs. They are providing a two-year training process for them. There is a challenge in this whole area.