Mary Harney (Dublin Mid West, Progressive Democrats)

The primary care strategy is the roadmap for the future development of primary care services in Ireland over a period of ten years, both as the appropriate service for the delivery of the majority of people's health and social care needs and to complement the services provided by acute hospitals. At the heart of the strategy is the aim of developing services in the community to give people direct access to integrated multi-disciplinary teams of general practitioners, nurses, health care assistants, home helps, occupational therapists and others.

I was encouraged to learn that in excess of 1,000 general practitioners replied to invitations from Health Service Executive local health managers for expressions of interest to become involved in the further development of primary care services and, in particular, in the formation of primary care teams either this year or in coming years. The HSE has been working with stakeholders to finalise arrangements for the establishment of a significant number of primary care teams in development in 2006. The HSE envisaged that between 75 and 100 would be established in 2006 and it has indicated that it expects this target to be achieved.

As part of this development process, the HSE advertised in September for applications for up to 300 additional frontline health professionals from a range of disciplines and this recruitment process is approaching completion. A considerable amount of work is being undertaken by the executive to realign HSE services to give best efficiencies for team-working and to determine ideal team compositions to meet the needs of identified areas.

The HSE has informed me that work will also commence during 2006 with GPs who will help to form teams in 2007 and my Department will continue to work with the HSE to monitor progress in this regard.

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