Thomas Pringle (Donegal South West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Ceann Comhairle for selecting this Topical Issue for discussion as it is an important matter that is causing grave concern throughout County Donegal. As the Minister will be aware, Nowdoc has provided out-of-hours general practitioner, GP, services in County Donegal since 2001. Two years ago, when the out-of-hours service was threatened with closure, Caredoc started to provide GP out-of-hour services, while Nowdoc continued to provide the Health Service Executive back-up service for the out-of-hours service. In recent weeks, Caredoc has proposed changes to the service, under which two of the current three centres would close for what is known as the "red eye shift", which extends from midnight until 9 a.m. The doctors in question would then be redeployed to a centre in Letterkenny, which would cover an area stretching from Gweebarra Bridge to Malin Head, which is probably larger than most counties. This has created serious concerns about the level of service that will be available to people in the relevant areas, especially west Donegal and the Inishowen Peninsula, and how the service will be managed.

Caredoc has claimed the changes are being made because an insufficient number of doctors is available to cover the so-called red eye shift. I believe the proposal is a cost-saving measure aimed at reducing the overheads in running the service. Nowdoc's call-out ratio and service indicators are very good and it provides a service in a timely fashion to those who urgently need care. People are concerned that this excellent out-of-hours general practitioner service will be undermined and further reduced in future.

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