Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

On the Deputy's first point on the self-employed, obviously, the Government is well aware of the anomaly that has existed here for some time, with hundreds of thousands of self-employed people without any safety net. I understand completely the difficulties being experienced by self-employed people if something like this happens. That is why the Government started to address this in the recent budget, hopefully to eliminate the anomaly in terms of tax that has been there between self-employed and PAYE people.

Obviously, the Mangan report was produced for the Minister for Social Protection. Unfortunately, we have not been able to implement it in the lifetime of this Dáil. The issue the Deputy raises is a very real one and that is why the Minister for Finance, Deputy Noonan, has started the process with the tax credit for self-employed people. Clearly, we cannot do all of these things without the resources to provide it.

With regard free GP care, the Minister for Health, Deputy Varadkar, has been very realistic here, both in terms of the numbers of doctors who are in training and the capacity to deliver the system. The GP care will be for all under 18s. He has pointed out the potential of overwhelming the service if we proceed on this particular model. Were we to have nurses doing some of the work currently done by GPs, it would be a different matter.

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