John Crown (Independent)

Yes. General practice in Ireland answers to the principles of social democracy but is not intensely bureaucratised. General practitioners run their own practices, get paid by the Government for their public patients and answer to the various agencies of the Government and their profession for the standards which they bring. This is vastly different from the way we run the hospital system. Hospital-based specialists work for a cohort of professional managerialists in heavily bureaucratised institutions. I wish the Minister well with this legislation and the rest of his reforms.