Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister. It is welcome news to hear he has requested an evaluation to be carried out on the expansion of the scheme. I hope it will also include the payments that are made under the scheme to the practitioners. As the Minister outlined, it is a very valuable service and one I recently experienced. The Minister might have noticed the black eye I have at the moment. Many people have been asking me about it. I have had to tell them I underwent a small eye procedure recently. It really brought home the value of having practitioners, such as the one to which the Minister referred in our constituency of Wicklow, available to the community.

The Minister quite rightly stated that people do not have to go into a hospital setting to have a procedure carried out. If we could expand this service across the country, it would fit very well with the primary healthcare model he has been so successfully implementing whereby services that are suitable and appropriate take place in the community setting. There are far better outcomes from it. It is far better for the practitioners and people working in those services and for the patients, which is our primary concern.

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