Martin Heydon (Kildare South, Fine Gael)
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1096. To ask the Minister for Health the status of the consideration of a proposal to provide specific general practitioner training programme for County Kildare in view of the increasing population in the county and concerns around the future availability of GP's particularly in rural areas; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [36502/17]

Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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The Government is committed to the continued development of General Practitioner capacity and to ensuring that patients across the country continue to have access to GP services.

The annual number of GP training places available has been increased from 120 in 2009 to an intake of 170 in 2017. The Government is committed to further increasing this number in future years.

The HSE works alongside the Irish College of General Practitioners in actively recruiting and training GP trainees. At present, GP training is delivered by 14 separate GP training programmes throughout the country. While Co. Kildare does not have its own dedicated GP training programme, there are several GP trainees based in GP training practices in Co. Kildare. These trainees are principally aligned to the Midlands and Trinity training programmes. In 2016, there were a total of 18 trainees based in training practices in Kildare - 14 trainees from the Midlands training programme and 4 from the Trinity training programme. There are no plans, at present, to introduce a new training programme for County Kildare.