Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

We are in agreement that we need more GPs. It is relevant that the number of places for GPs has more than doubled in the past decade and we are continuing to increase it. That is going to go some of the way. In part, that will provide more GPs and more cover, which is needed and, in part, it will allow for a different work-life balance for GPs. What younger GPs say to me is that in the past, in their parents' generation, GPs sometimes worked 60, 70 and 80 hours a week. They covered on-call and if somebody got sick in their community, they went out on Sunday night. GPs coming in now say they do not want that. In a lot of cases, they do not want to work on their own. They want to be part of multidisciplinary teams. They want a decent work-life balance. They are dead right. That is exactly what we need to do. We are increasing college places and training places. We are looking at providing rural GP supports.

I also agree that we do need a new GP contract. We are in the middle of several negotiations with the Irish Medical Organisation, IMO, at the moment. We are talking about non-consultant hospital doctors, NCHDs, the new consultant contract and many other issues. There have been some good additions to the GP contract such as chronic disease management and so forth. I agree that when we can find a bit of clear space, which will be soon, we can sit down with the IMO and start looking at a modern fit-for-purpose GP contract.

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