Census of Population
Dail Éireann — 2025-07-01
============================================================

Darren O'Rourke (SF), Meath East

It is really important that when we have CSO information, we use it to plan for services in areas. I look at my own county of Meath, which has the lowest number of mental health beds, the lowest number of GPs and the lowest number of gardaí per population; has some of the largest class sizes in the State; and has the lowest number of playgrounds per population. The issue of GPs has been in the news in the past 24 hours. I have written to the Minister for Health and the HSE about a case in Ashbourne where, thankfully, we have a new GP. This GP's practice is at risk because they are not being allowed access to the GMS scheme because they are waiting for a lift to be installed in the practice. A reasonable accommodation has been made in the meantime but the GMS scheme is a firm "No". This needs to change. We are desperately in need of GPs so when we have one, we need to hold on to them and I ask the Minister of State to look at that.

---

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/2025-07-01/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-27T06:54:46+00:00
Sitting date: 2025-07-01