Eamon Scanlon (Sligo-Leitrim, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

According to reports in the national newspapers yesterday, over 900 general practitioners will retire over the next five years. I understand that 50% of GPs in County Leitrim will retire over the next seven years. The HSE has failed to get a doctor to attend to people in the town of Kinlough, which has grown substantially in recent years and has quite a large catchment area. As a doctor, the Taoiseach knows that the front-line soldiers in the health care system send people into the secondary care system. If we do not have enough doctors, our accident and emergency units will be flooded. They are extremely bad and they are going to get an awful lot worse. A new recruitment drive is needed to retain GPs who have trained in this country. We need them to stay here. I understand from media reports this morning that there are plenty of training places. It is not the case that we do not have enough places for training doctors. The problem is that doctors are leaving the country when they are trained. We need to do something. I suggest we should push ahead with the primary medical care centres, which are part of Government policy, and organise a promotion to keep the doctors here. If that were done, it would be a major help.

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