Michael Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to have a discussion on this very important issue.

I will first focus on the recruitment of GPs. It is becoming increasingly difficult to recruit GPs, who are vitally important when it comes to the delivery of primary care and keeping people out of hospitals. Rural GPs find it difficult financially, something in the past we never would have thought would happen. It is simply not as attractive as it might have been in the past for people to operate a rural GP practice because of all the different expenses involved. We must put more investment into primary care and reverse the cuts to general practice that took place a number of years ago and which have left it difficult for people to run general practices. The new deal which will enable stabilisation of the service probably will not be fully rolled out until 2021 or 2022. That is quite simply unacceptable because the primary care promised to the under-12s and patients with chronic illness is needed to keep them out of hospitals services as much as possible. We need that new GP contract to be rolled out and for it to be financially viable, feasible and sensible for people to operate primary care units in their own areas.

In Ireland we are running 500 or 600 GPs short of what we actually should have. That certainly is not welcome, as we all know how important the local GP is, in the same way we know how important the community welfare nurses are. Those nurses are a lifeline through their calling to people's homes. I commend these nurses, and I obviously can only speak of the community nurses I know personally in County Kerry who give 100% commitment, as well as a 100% correct and great service for their patients in communities. They are the reason people are able to live and stay at home. The GP who might call to a person's home on a regular basis, if that patient was unable to travel to meet the GP, is probably the lifeline keeping that person living in his or her own home, community and family structure.

Everything that can be done should be done to reduce the waiting list at accident and emergency hospital units. We should redirect patients by giving them the adequate services they need in community hospitals, by their GP service or by availing of the services of community nurses. Some people, obviously, must go to an emergency department but care can be provided in the community, rather than choking up emergency departments with people waiting for treatment. It is totally inhumane for people to have to wait for so many hours in an emergency department.

I regularly visit the emergency departments in Kerry, Cork and Limerick and usually do so in the middle of the night. The reason I do that is to see exactly what is happening in the middle of the night, which is what I call the hours from 12 midnight until 6 a.m. I suggest any Deputy or public representative who has not been in a major emergency department during those hours cannot talk about the service or what is happening.

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