Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I acknowledge that in some parts of the country, the GP out-of-hours services are struggling to provide the kind of response times people want. It is also important to say that in other parts of the country, an excellent service is being provided. I met some of the GP out-of-hours providers at the Irish Medical Organisation, IMO, conference the weekend before last. They asked me to convene a forum of those providers so they can meet to exchange information, advice and challenges with regard to what is and is not working. I have asked the Department to pull that together. The Senator will be aware that we are kicking off a strategic review of general practice. Opportunities for out-of-hours services will be included in that. Put simply, the other thing we need is many more GPs. The 2018 capacity review showed us to be broadly in line with the countries Ireland was compared with. However, we have a growing and ageing population and we are asking our GPs to become more and more central in our health service. They are now providing access to diagnostics, chronic disease management, vaccinations against Covid-19 and other new services.

We are doing a few things. We are working with the Irish College of General Practitioners, ICGP, to bring GPs from abroad. For example, it is working with South Africa and other countries to bring GPs in with a particular focus on rural practices and on some urban areas. There are issues as regards access in some of the more deprived areas. The other thing we are doing is to triple the number of GPs in training compared with 2009. In the coming years, we will have many more GPs in training who will be moving through the country. They provide medical care directly to patients and ultimately they will become qualified GPs.

In the meantime, we are working with the ICGP and the IMO. There is a substantial fund available this year in the context of the expansion of the GP visit cards to an extra 400,000 or 500,000 people and to support general practices in hiring practice nurses, investing in IT systems and so on. The GP out-of-hours coverage is a part of that.