Mary Harney (Dublin Mid West, Progressive Democrats)

We have 2,500 general practitioners, who provide a very good service. People in the UK can wait for up to four or five days to see a GP, while in Ireland it is a same-day service, and a good one. As the Deputy knows, we are training more and more doctors. As I said in a different forum, health care professionals, like others, always do well in a well developed society. The reason we took such a strong view on the pharmacy issue was to save €100 million, so that it could be put into areas such as primary care and targeted at many of the other concerns raised by the Deputy.

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