Patricia Ryan (Kildare South, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank my colleague, Deputy Cullinane, for introducing this important motion and giving me an opportunity to raise the issue of serious pressures on GPs in my constituency. After more than a decade of chronic underfunding by successive Fine Gael- and Fianna Fáil-led Governments, local GP and healthcare services are creaking at the seams. We have staff shortages, increased workload, longer waiting times, insufficient alternative community care - the list goes on and on. The 2024 budget was a travesty. Services cannot run properly when the funding provided is not even enough to maintain an already overwhelmed service level. Providing no new funding literally rubs salt in the wound. Recruitment embargoes tell trainees and graduates not to bother staying. We are exporting our best and brightest. If this Government did its job properly, we would have proper funding and the health service would function properly. We all deserve a universal healthcare service.

Older people in rural communities such as my constituency of Kildare South deserve better. The Minister of State and I meet older people every day. We deal with them all the time. The Minister of State knows, as I do, that if people cannot access a GP, their health gets worse and if they end up on a trolley, their chance of recovery is far less. I ask the Minister of State to look into that. The healthcare needs of local communities have been ignored by the Government for far too long. County Kildare cannot wait any longer. Sinn Féin's plan is the way forward. The Government must step up to the plate by developing a public contract for GPs in order to address the shortage of GPs. It must lift the recruitment embargoes and double the recruitment target to keep our graduates here in order to provide the primary care that we need so badly.

See this speech in context