Mary Harney (Dublin Mid West, Progressive Democrats)

The treatment purchase fund has been highly successful and I am amazed Fine Gael plans to close it down. Many people would be surprised at that.

Some 630 staff have been assigned to primary care teams and I had the opportunity to visit one of them in Castleisland last Friday. It is not just about additionality but about how people work together and how the existing resource of public health nurses, physiotherapists, occupational therapists and GPs work in a community. In the first instance, we want to get them to work as a team because they deal with the same patients. We need better facilities. The HSE recently sought expressions of interest on more than 100 sites around the country and there were 400 expressions of interest. The first 18 contracts will be entered into very quickly and I welcome that level of interest from GPs and others around the country to provide the physical infrastructure so teams can operate effectively in a single centre.

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