Dr. Colm Henry:

As the CEO said, we have increased the number of trainees. We have a national level of GPs to population which is suboptimal, frankly. It is six or seven per 10,000 people. We need to get to about 11 per 10,000. As the Deputy pointed out, looking at a population level and even a regional level fails to address the particular exposure we have in rural, single-handed and isolated practices. I attended a conference of that group of general practitioners last weekend. Through the GP agreement in 2023, money has been set aside to support specific general practices which are stand-alone with locum support and linking them to a hub GP practice, in addition to the measures the CEO referenced, under which we have 121 international graduates supporting these kinds of practices. We hope to raise that to 250 per year right through to 2031 so we can go from our current suboptimal provision of GP cover, with, as the Deputy points out, an ageing GP workforce, to having the additional 350 trainees per year bring us to the ratio we would like to see, of 11 per 10,000 people. That special care needs to take place for those isolated, stand-alone, single-handed practices because of the particular vulnerability.