Jennifer Whitmore (Wicklow, Social Democrats)

GP services around the country are at breaking point. They are oversubscribed and understaffed. It can often take two or three weeks before people get to see their doctors. I spoke to a 90-year-old woman recently. She has to wait three weeks when she needs an appointment. She has a history of dizziness and falls. Oftentimes, she ends up in accident and emergency, which sends her back to her GP. We see the problems there. I also dealt with a child in the constituency the Tánaiste and I represent who needed chemotherapy but the GP list in her new home area was two years long. As a result, she could not get to a GP to get a referral for chemotherapy. This is a ticking time bomb, and it is about to go off. GP services are the foundation of our health service. If they crumble, everything else will collapse. The Government is sleepwalking us into a disaster because it is not treating this with the level of urgency it demands.

A new report this week states that we will need at least 940 GPs over the coming 15 years in order to meet the demand that exists. Where is the Government's plan to deliver these GPs? I acknowledge that some new training posts have been created, but that is just scratching the surface of what is needed. We need instead a sense of urgency. However, there has been nothing but foot dragging. The most recent example of this is the strategic review of general practice. This review started in 2023 and was supposed to be completed that year. More than two years later, there is still no sign of it. How long more will have to wait for action? We do not need more reviews. We know what the issues are. It is blindingly obvious that we need more GPs. We know what the barriers are for GPs. Why is the Government not taking action to address the shortfall?

A critical reform that must be rolled out is the introduction of salaried GPs. This is where GPs would be directly employed by the HSE. When GPs go into medicine, they do so because they have a passion for making people better. They did not necessarily go into medicine to be businesspeople, accountants or employers. What they want is a better work-life balance. Having a salaried position provided by the HSE is the answer to that.

I must also address the issue of the GP "deserts" across the country, particularly in rural areas. These are places, where we are unable to get people to set up their own practices. The concept of salaried GPs is something that most of those in opposition agree with. The introduction of such GPs is also the subject of a commitment in the programme for Government. In light of that, what exactly is holding this up? Successive Governments have talked about the reform of GP services for decades, but the GP contract has largely remained the same for 40 years. At what point will the Government stop talking about it and start doing it? When will it start taking the GP crisis seriously and when will we see the introduction of salaried GPs?

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