Marie Sherlock (Dublin Central, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I hope the Minister and I can agree we need more GP care in this country and, in particular, in Dublin's north inner city in the constituency we are both elected to represent. My question to the Minister today is what he is going to do as Minister for Finance to stave off the closure of the GP Care For All practice in Summerhill in Dublin 1. As he and I know, this GP care practice is run by a medical charity. It directly employs GPs because no one else has been willing to set up a GP practice there. This is because the partnership model of privately owned GP practices would not work there.

The double taxation issue with regard to the GP practice arose in early 2024. It has already been well aired. The reality is that in 2025 we have had no progress. We have had unworkable solutions from the Department of Health. Two of these solutions were vetoed by the HSE. We have a farcical situation whereby the HSE has paid for legal and accountancy advice to be given to the Department of Finance and we have heard nothing back from the Minister's Department, the Department which instigated this mess in the first place.

Last November, in the middle of the election campaign, the former Minister for Health, Stephen Donnelly, went on RTÉ's "Prime Time" and said there was no way we would let this practice close. He said not only would it not close but that it would be used as a pilot project and a practice would be opened in Finglas. What is happening here? The five GPs tell us they cannot stay open past June if the double income tax payment issue is not resolved. If it does close, the impact will be devastating, and not only for the 2,600 patients in the practice. This is not just about Summerhill. It is about Finglas, where there are 14 GPs on the GMS schemes in east Finglas and no GP in west Finglas. It is about the dire shortages we see throughout the country in terms of timely access to GP care. It is about the impact of these shortages, including delayed diagnosis, the deterioration of people's conditions, increased hospitalisations and premature deaths.

The reason we have these shortages is the private system of GP care in Ireland. Time and again when we speak to GP trainees they tell us they want to work as clinicians and do not want to set up businesses. At present, the only way we can ensure GP care in some of the most socially deprived parts of our communities is for the HSE to recruit directly or to let medical charities continue in operation. We need to join the dots. Even The Lancet this week pronounced on how we need to change. It devoted an editorial in its March edition on how Ireland is an outlier with a private system of GP care, how our inaccessible primary care system places tremendous strain on hospitals and how this is a political choice.

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