John Kelly (Labour)

Like Senator MacSharry, I welcome the Minister to the House. He has always been amenable to the House and has been in the Chamber more often than I have. I welcome the Bill and the fact that it opens up competition, which will hopefully reduce prices. GPs charge for writing letters to help someone to get a medical card when that person is probably living below poverty guidelines. Charging €50 to write a letter to help achieve this should be outlawed. A similar case involves doctors' certificates to get disability benefit.

Regarding the out-of-hours service, with more GPs coming on stream there may be an opportunity to consider services such as WestDoc because people have not bought into it and it does not work. Some of the newer, younger GPs may be willing to be on call at weekends and perhaps it will revert to the better service that it was historically.