David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein)
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371. To ask the Minister for Health the cost of increasing GP trainee places by 50%; and the number of places this would create. [30381/24]

Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail)
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To increase the number of GPs working in the country and thereby improve access to GP services, the annual intake of doctors into the GP training programme has been increased by 80% from 2015 to 2023. Last year, there were 286 new entrants to GP training, and 350 places for new entrants have been made available for this year. The ICGP, which is responsible for training GPs, stated that 968 applications were received for 2023, while 1,311 applications were received for this year.

The annual year one cost of a doctor on the GP training programme is approximately €105,000, accordingly the cost of increasing the number of GP training places by 50%, a further 175 places to 525 places for next year, would be approximately €18.4 million.

However, it is important to note that capacity to increase the number of GP trainees must be built through the health service, as for the first two years of training GP trainees rotate through a variety of hospital specialties. Expanding the number of such places available for GP trainees may also carry additional costs which cannot be quantified at this time.