Jerry Buttimer (Cork South-Central, Fine Gael)

I understand the Deputy's frustration. Primary care and the utilisation of the centre are perhaps matters that the HSE is best placed to tackle. Equally, the local regional health forum is a forum where the Deputy and other public representatives can put pressure on the HSE. However, I take the Deputy's point. Again, on behalf of the Minister, I wish to reassure the Deputy and I thank her for raising this important issue.

The Government is as committed as the Minister is to the development of primary care and community healthcare services, as committed to in the programme for Government. To expand and develop community care services, recurring annual funding of €195 million has been provided to the enhanced community care, ECC, programme. This suite of strategic reform initiatives seeks to reduce dependency on the hospital system by delivering increased levels of healthcare provision in the community setting, with service delivery reorientated towards healthcare general practice, primary care and community based services, which is what the Deputy has articulated and is what we are committed to.

Since its launch in 2020, the ECC programme has significantly expanded, with more than 2,800 additional healthcare staff recruited and the successful establishment of 96 community health team networks and 53 of the planned 60 community specialist teams for older people and chronic disease. Aligned to the ECC programme, GP access to community diagnostics provides a direct referral pathway to GPs for patients to access community-based radiology scans, including X-rays, DXA, MRI and CT scans and chronic disease tests. This service has received significant funding of almost €47 million for its continuation this year, and will provide 240,000 community radiology scans and up to 161,000 chronic disease tests within the year.

The Government fully recognises the frustration in the local area, as articulated by the Deputy, in regard to waiting times and lack of availability of services. It also recognises that much work needs to be done to fill vacancies at local level and address waiting lists. To this end, a joint Department of Health and HSE programmatic approach to primary care waiting lists is under way to develop both short-term and long-term solutions to the long waiting lists for primary care services in order to ensure consistent, equitable and timely access to primary care services.

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