Alan Kelly (Tipperary North, Labour)
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366. To ask the Minister for Health if GPs can charge for a patient/family who request receipts from the GP practice of the fees and charges incurred by them at the GP over a period of any timeframe from one to five years. [38491/25]

Jennifer Carroll MacNeill (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael)
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GPs are private practitioners, most of whom hold one or more HSE contracts for the provision of public health services, such as the GMS contract for the provision of GP services without charge to medical card and GP visit card holders. Currently, 2566 GPs hold a GMS contract, while a further 632 GPs do not hold a GMS contract but hold one or more other HSE contracts.

The GMS contract sets out that GPs are required to provide eligible patients, i.e. medical card and GP visit card holders, with ''all proper and necessary treatment of a kind usually undertaken by a general practitioner and not requiring special skill or experience of a degree or kind which general practitioners cannot reasonably be expected to possess". Persons who hold a medical card or a GP visit card are not subject to any co-payments or other charges in respect of such services.

Fees charged by GPs outside the terms of the GMS contracts, or other HSE contracts, are a matter of private contract between the clinicians and their patients. Neither myself nor the HSE have any role in relation to the charging by GPs for such services.