Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

If I do not have adequate information here for the Deputy, I will revert to Deputies O'Reilly and Crowe.

The development of primary care is central to the Government's objective to deliver a high-quality, integrated and cost-effective health service. The programme for Government, as Deputy O'Reilly knows, commits to this decisive shift within the health service towards primary care in order to deliver better care closer to home in communities across the country, and I recognise that general practice has a key role to play in this context.

GPs contracted under the general medical services, GMS, scheme provide services to people who hold a medical card or a GP visit card and are remunerated for these services primarily on a capitation basis, with a range of additional support payments and fees for specific items of service. In 2015, the HSE made payments of approximately €464 million to GPs for the provision of general medical services for about 2.17 million eligible people, of which €81.6 million represented contributions towards the employment of support staff. Last year, total payments to GPs under the GMS scheme were in the region of €500 million, of which €85.3 million represented contributions towards the employment of support staff.

The Government is committed to ensuring that patients throughout the country continue to have access to GP services and that general practice is sustainable in all areas into the future. I want to ensure that existing GP services are retained and that general practice remains an attractive career option for newly qualified GPs.

I am cognisant, as the Deputy and everyone else will know by this stage, of the need for a new GP services contract which will help modernise our health service and develop a strengthened primary care sector. Health service management has already progressed a number of significant measures through engagement with GP representatives. The GP contracts review process, which has recently recommenced, will seek to arrive at further measures aimed at making general practice an attractive, fulfilling and rewarding career option into the future.

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