Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

There is a lot of anecdotal evidence. We have some reviews. For example, the Irish College of General Practitioners has done a review of GP access to diagnostics which shows that a very high number of those people would have ended up in accident and emergency departments instead of ending up back with their GPs. Anecdotally, I can tell the Deputy that patients are saying that they no longer have to go into hospital to manage their chronic diseases. The doctors and the healthcare professionals are saying that they are now actively managing patients who otherwise would definitely have ended up in hospital. They are also saying that they are able to take patients out of hospital much quicker. This is really new. We have some 2,500 staff of the 3,500 now in place. Really we only started this in mid-2021, which was less than two years ago. It is very early for us to have the kind of data that the Deputy is looking for, and which we would like to have. Anecdotally, it is going very well. Perhaps Dr. Henry can add some detail on this as well.