Thomas Gould (Cork North Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I commend my party colleague, Deputy Cullinane, on bringing forward this motion. Unlike this Government, he has his finger on the pulse. If the Minister of State were to ask him about out-of-hours services in Cork city, he could tell him they are not functioning as they should. The Minister for Health told me on 29 February that he was not aware of any reduction of out-of-hours GP services in Cork city. This is extremely worrying because it has now been proven beyond a doubt that SouthDoc in Blackpool has again shut down. SouthDoc tried to close the Blackpool service under the umbrella of the Covid pandemic, and then tried to keep it closed. The community and I, however, fought a hard campaign to get it reopened.

A family member of mine was sick last week and I rang SouthDoc at 8 p.m., only to be told that my local SouthDoc out-of-hours GP service in Blackpool was closed and that there was no doctor available. That is what I was told last weekend. Now, SouthDoc is getting paid millions of euro to provide a service it is not providing. Some of my constituents are being sent to the Kinsale Road, while others are being sent as far away as Mallow. I refer to how difficult it is for people living on the north side of Cork city to get to the Kinsale Road or to Mallow if they do not have a car. One family told me it cost them €60 to get out and back from the GP. Another family said it had cost them almost €100 to get in and out from the GP.

This is happening on the watch of this Government. We are now seeing the craziness of all this because SouthDoc is not doing the job it is getting paid to do and patients are going into accident and emergency departments in Mercy Hospital and Cork University Hospital, where people are lined up along the corridors on trolleys. If the Minister of State were to go onto my Facebook page, he could look at a post I put up last weekend. People told their stories concerning how they cannot get an appointment, how the SouthDoc GP service in Blackpool is closed and how that organisation is pulling the wool over this Government and this Minister for Health and not doing its job.

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