David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The Minister's response sets out the scale of the challenge because we are talking about 233 training places. I engaged with the ICGP on this and approximately 30 places over the past two years were not available to allow some of those training places to be taken up. That is one of the problems. We need 2,100 GPs over the next five years to simply stand still. That is on a no-change basis.

We are all committed to universal GP access, but we are only training 233 people. Not all of them will go into the public system, not all of them will sign up to the GMS contract and not all of them will become GPs. Some will go into hospitals and stay there and some will leave. We have a real crisis and unless we ratchet up the number of training places and have a much more joined-up approach between the training body, the acute hospitals to make sure people are trained, and the actual need, we are in real difficulty.

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