David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Obviously, I welcome any additional funding that goes into general practice, but I have also engaged with the representative bodies in recent years, in particular in recent weeks and months since the Government's announcement. There are solutions. What GPs say to me is that we need to train more GPs and we need to increase the number of training places. I agree about practice nurses and that we need protected funding for training in order that we can have a better skills mix within general practice. We must also provide practice nurses with the option to become specialist nurses. We must consider employing GPs directly to provide out-of-hours locum support, but also to provide the out-of-hours services that GPs are perhaps not covering. We should have a blended mix of independent GP practices and directly salaried GPs who can do some of that work, but we also need a new, modern, fit-for-purpose contract. The contract itself is quite archaic in terms of the staffing subsidy. There is a lot that can be done. If that is done, and we put the infrastructure in place, then we can expand free GP care. There is a fear that if we try to go too quickly and the infrastructure is not there what we will end up with are waiting lists for GPs, which I am sure the Minister does not want, I do not want and patients do not want.

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