James O'Connor (Cork East, Fianna Fail)
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I might just make one further point, which I also made to the Secretary General of the Department of Health. It relates to the recruitment of GPs. We understand, from previous meetings of the Committee of Public Accounts and questions I put to Mr. Watt, that there was a 1,000-GP deficit in Ireland, and that the rate of retirement just about fell underneath the rate of recruitment at the time the question was put to him. That deficit is not being dealt with. The coming changes, relating to charges to GPs and medical card reforms, will cause a further erosion of their income and a bigger problem when it comes to recruiting people. Obviously, there is a lifestyle aspect of people wanting to live in urban areas such as Dublin, Cork, Limerick and so on, but if we want to attract people to go into rural communities, similarly to what was done with the recruitment of South African doctors on work permits in Cork, which was a great initiative, how are we supposed to get people in if the executive is planning to implement reforms that will cut practices' income, one way or another?