Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I congratulate the Deputy on his appointment as his party's spokesperson on health. We obviously know each other well. It is a great day for Greystones and County Wicklow, with such great emphasis being placed by us on healthcare. I, too, look forward to us working together. As a much more accomplished politician than I once said, "I wish you luck but not too much." I also very much extend the hand of co-operation. There is much on which we all agree - Sláintecare being the most obvious and important blueprint. I look forward to working with the Deputy in the many months and years ahead and being held to account in this House on the important issues.

I thank the Deputy for his important question. I note that he attended the IMO conference recently, as I did, at which we both heard clearly that general practice in this country was in need of a significant investment. It is fair to say that, like many parts of the public service, it suffered significantly during the years of recession. Decisions that had to be made by the Deputy's party in government on the FEMPI legislation and decisions made by mine starved it of much needed resources.

I made it clear at the conference that I intended to commence negotiations with GP organisations at the end of this month. The purpose of the negotiations is twofold. The first purpose is to ascertain what we must do to ensure general practice in Ireland can be sustainable into the future and what is a fair fee to pay for the services general practices are currently providing. As the Deputy will be aware, I now have powers, given to me by this House under legislation passed by the Minister for Finance, Deputy Paschal Donohoe, last December, which allow me to set fees. The second purpose is to ascertain what can general practice do, if we are willing to resource it to do more. We have all heard about the exciting things GPs want to do in terms of access to diagnostics, working as part of the primary care service, interacting more with the hospital setting and taking some work out of it and into the community, but they can only do this if they are resourced to do so. The Government wants and expects to spend many millions of euro more in general practice in the next few years and wants to start doing so quickly. I hope, with intense negotiations that can commence by the end of this month, we can make progress to that end in the coming months.

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