Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I believe we are following the correct sequence to bring about a new GP contract. It is the position of the Deputy's party and of all parties in the House that the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, ICTU, has a crucial role in how we do our business in respect of industrial relations. The Irish Medical Organisation is a member of ICTU and it is the body with which successive Governments, including those led by the Deputy's party, have engaged on delivering issues for general practice and for the health service generally. The NAGP has a constructive role to play and it has some good ideas for how to reform and improve our health service. I want to engage with it in that regard. In doing so, I will be the first Minister for Health to engage with the association and bring it into a process. However, I must respect the structures in which we operate and the agreements we have for how these processes are carried out with the Irish Medical Organisation. As the financial emergency measures in the public interest, FEMPI, and these issues were negotiated when both the Deputy's party and my party were in government through the ICTU structures and engagement with ICTU, it is appropriate that I begin the conversation with the IMO. The NAGP will have a role to play.

With regard to the eighth amendment, I fundamentally disagree with the approach being adopted by members of the NAGP in this regard in terms of the sequence. We will agree the clinical guidelines first with the medical colleges, which includes the Irish College of General Practitioners, and then we will engage on how we will resource it. We will get the clinical guidelines right. I do not wish to see the issues around implementing the mandate of the Irish people in the referendum being conflated, and the Deputy is not doing this, with issues regarding FEMPI and the future of general practice.

I thank the NAGP for the constructive role it played with regard to CervicalCheck. Its president did an excellent job in putting forth important information about the screening programme. The association has a role to play and we will engage with it in the coming weeks.

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