Eugene Murphy (Roscommon-Galway, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

In the programme for Government, a colossal €15 billion is laid out for the Department of Health. Despite this, and as no one knows better than the Taoiseach, who is a medical doctor, we have the most extraordinary waiting list of up to 700,000 people. According to comments attributed to him in today's edition of The Irish Times, the Taoiseach is hoping to arrive at a situation where at least two patients per week will not be referred by their GPs to hospital. With 2,500 GPs, that would amount to 20,000 patients per month, which would be a great way of reducing the waiting list. How does the Taoiseach propose to do this? Does he realise that most of our GPs are overstretched, overworked and deeply stressed? I cannot see this working. Perhaps the Taoiseach might reveal to the House how he proposes to turn this situation around in the way suggested in The Irish Times.

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