Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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That is welcome. However, there are rural areas, not just urban areas, where there are gaps. Trying to fill these gaps will present a huge challenge. As we know, a percentage of GPs are over 55 years of age and will be retiring. Along with the health implications, this has huge financial implications because if an issue is not dealt with at primary care, it is being loaded onto the hospital system, which means a bigger cost down the line with poorer outcomes. An increase of 8% or 9% is not significant. I would have hoped that we were upping to at least double figures of maybe 20%, 25% or 30% or trying to get to that increase in the numbers in training. The issue with Westdoc, and Midoc is another one that replicates the issue and we discussed SouthDoc here in the past, is that we need more GPs to cover those out-of-hours services. We need more people for day surgeries in general practitioner centres throughout the country.