Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I have asked the Tánaiste that question and the answer was "No" and that he had not done something like this before or since. As far as I am concerned, the most important thing when something like this emerges is that there is full accountability to the House. That was my main concern on Saturday. To be fair to the Tánaiste, he had no issue whatsoever with coming before the House to address the issue and to answer any questions that people may have in this regard. It is of a different order to other incidents. I do not know why the Tánaiste sent the GP contract to the National Association of General Practitioners, NAGP, in the way that he did. I do not think that was best practice. It was not appropriate and it was the wrong way to do things. That said, everybody was engaging with the NAGP at some level. Even in this House, the NAGP was lobbying Opposition parties. It wanted to hear what was going on and to be consulted on the GP contract.

Commitments were made that the group would be consulted on this. From what I can gather, that does not appear to have happened in a comprehensive way once the agreement was published. It was published by the IMO in a very detailed way to present to its members. The essentials of it were out there in early April.

Of course, in accordance with the Competition Act 2002, the GPs, as self-employed contractors, would have to decide individually whether to sign up to the agreement that was essentially being offered by the HSE or the Government to the tune of approximately €210 million. Each practice would benefit from additional payments relating to reversal of financial emergency measures in the public interest legislation and the chronic disease management programme, on which we have all actively campaigned for quite some time, as well as various items in the agreement that were published by the IMO. Generally speaking, all GPs are now operating under this and most people would accept it represents an improvement in primary care services. That remains the position.

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