Michael Noonan (Limerick East, Fine Gael)
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Question 114: To ask the Minister for Health and Children if she will appoint an official of her Department who will take a lead role in an initiative to provide an out-of-hours general practitioner service in Limerick city along the lines of Shannon Doc or West Doc; if her attention has been drawn to a case resulting from the lack of an out-of-hours service in Limerick city, which has been brought to the attention of local public representatives by the Simon Community (details supplied); and if she will make a statement on the matter. [19697/10]

Mary Harney (Dublin Mid West, Independent)
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Under the General Medical Services (GMS) Scheme, general practitioners (GPs) are obliged to provide services for their medical card and GP visit card patients, for 40 hours each week. They must also make arrangements to enable contact to be made with them, or a locum/deputy, for emergencies outside of these hours.

GP out-of-hours co-operatives allow general practitioners to put in place arrangements to provide services to their patients outside normal surgery hours in the evening, on weekends and bank holidays. As the Deputy is aware, there is not yet a GP out-of-hours co-operative to serve Limerick city.

The HSE recently published a national review of GP Out of Hours Services. One of the recommendations in the report is that each of the four HSE regions should engage with GPs to ensure that out of hours coverage is available in all areas of the country. The HSE's National Service Plan for 2010 commits the Executive to commencing implementation of the recommendations of the review in 2010. Performance against this commitment will be assessed and reported to me.

In relation to the specific case referred to by the Deputy, the HSE has advised that further details would be required to allow it to consider if an investigation is necessary. I will be happy to transmit this, if the Deputy wishes to take it further with more information. Perhaps he would like to contact my office so that he can be given an indication of the type of information that would be helpful.