Health Services Dail Éireann — 2023-04-25 ============================================================ Thomas Gould (SF), Cork North-Central Blarney GP service closed on 31 December when the GP retired. The service was closed and patients were sent to different areas. They were sent to Ballincollig, Blackpool and Ovens. There was a process under way to appoint a new GP. An announcement came last week and patients were told they would have to travel to Blackpool. There are vulnerable patients, including people with lifelong illnesses, families, and now they are expected to travel from Blarney to Blackpool. The people of Blarney are really upset by this. The HSE should have moved earlier. It was not until I contacted the HSE last year to let them know that the doctor was retiring that the position was advertised. It is not good enough from the HSE to leave advertising GP services to the last minute. It is really disappointing for the residents. To follow on from that, a GP is now retiring in the St. Mary's primary care centre in Gurranabraher. The same thing has happened again. This GP wanted to do a handover with a GP who is also in the primary care centre so that his patients would have the best possible handover and treatment. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2023-04-25/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:51:48+00:00 Sitting date: 2023-04-25