General Practitioner Services
Dail Éireann — 2026-03-05
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Martin Daly (FF), Roscommon-Galway

-----and that has suited the State well in recent years.
The Minister is right that if a GP has a GMS contract, he or she is obliged to be available and provide an out-of-hours service. Many younger GPs are choosing not to sign GMS contracts with the State because of that obligation. I agree 100% with the Minister that we really need to rethink the out-of-hours framework. It may well need to be separate from the GP contract because an increasingly older population of GPs are carrying that out-of-hours burden.
We need to rethink premises. We are relying on a private developer model. That has not worked in many rural or inner-city areas where we need State-led, HSE built premises - I would say rent free - to attract GPs to those areas.
Finally, we need public salary GPs in some remote rural areas and in deprived urban areas.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-03-05/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:44+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-03-05