Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I appreciate that, but I am saying that I took a call and made a recommendation to the Government that we should move ahead anyway. That was the right thing to do. Six years after the Oireachtas agreed that this would be the approach is long enough to wait. I allocated a substantial amount of money into this year's Estimates to support GPs. I hope the committee does not mind, but there is a substantial amount of money involved. On the basis that we are in the middle of very intensive negotiations with the IMO, it is not be the right time for me to give an exact number. I hope colleagues will appreciate this. We are literally negotiating it at present. I share the Deputy's frustration. I wanted this in place on 1 April. The IMO asked us to pause and we did so. We need to do this and we need to do it soon. We need to do it right. Ideally, we need to do it with the support and agreement of GPs throughout the country.