Barry Ward (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Déanaim comhghairdeas leis an Aire Airgeadais as ucht an bhuiséid a chonaiceamar inniu. Tá a lán rudaí ann is féidir linn a cheiliúradh. Welcome as they are, I am amused when I hear Senator Keogan talk about how important change is, notwithstanding the fact that we can look at so much good news today. Change is not always necessarily a good thing, in particular when it is change for change's sake. When things are going well it is important to stick with what we know and the proven success that we saw today.

I want to focus on one issue, namely, GP care. It is also worthy of note that many more people will now be eligible for GP visit medical cards as a result of measures brought in today. That is obviously to be welcomed, but it creates a knock-on difficulty in that GPs are not available to people, in particular those in receipt of GP medical cards. GP practices do not want to take those people on. It is increasingly difficult for people to find a GP in their local area. In addition, out-of-hours services are essentially non-existent.

Unfortunately, at the weekend a member of my family required a GP. I rang East Doc and did not even get a reply. I rang DL Doc and it did not even answer the phone. At least I could leave a message with East Doc. The idea that an out-of-hours GP service does not answer the phone is absolutely preposterous. It is something that must be dealt with in tandem with expanding the GP card and other services. It is no wonder accident and emergency departments are full of people if we are not putting in place a provision to stop people who need medical care from having to go into hospital at weekends. We need to do that if we are to deal with all of the other problems that exist across the health service. While I welcome the GP visit card, the Minister for Health has work to do at the very basic level of the health service to put in place systems that deal with people's needs out of hours and during the week.