James O'Connor (Cork East, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Chair for the opportunity to ask a couple of questions. I want to pursue an issue that arose last week relating to the GP shortage in the country. We learned from information provided to the Committee of Public Accounts that there is a shortage of approximately 1,000 doctors in the country from the number necessary to have a sufficient GP service capable of catering to the needs of the population. I want to put this to the Secretary General. The HSE is receiving €21 billion in public money, yet we still do not have a staffed health service and there is no sign of that being addressed. I have asked Mr. Watt about this on a number of occasions. I ask him again what he will do to try to solve the issue. It is a mixture of conditions and wages.

I hear time and again from young graduates, many around my age, who have completed their medical studies but have no desire to work in the Irish health service. They want to travel abroad and leave the country, for good in the majority of cases of those I spoke to. They have no desire to work within the HSE or our health system. This has to be addressed if we are going to be serious about bringing down waiting times and fixing queueing in emergency departments. The ramifications at a local level in many parts of the country, including my own constituency, are that the out-of-hours services are at breaking point and a number of important vacancies cannot be filled. I want to ask that from the outset. With €21 billion of expenditure, does Mr. Watt think the situation is good enough? I do not and I would like to know what he thinks.