General Practitioner Services
Dail Éireann — 2026-04-21
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Joe Neville (FG), Kildare North

There is a lot of information in the Minister's reply and I will take on a couple of the points. I have seen the benefit of the new primary healthcare centre in Celbridge, and we have one in Kilcock. It is about maximising the outputs we can get there. I am very conscious as well that in areas like Maynooth - and this is something we have mirrored all across the country - we might have seen a GP practice in the middle of a housing estate. That would have been very common years ago. Now the new GPs may be unwilling. Will they be able to set up a practice? Will they get planning permission? These are all serious complexities for those people. Extensions, as the Minister said, are really important. If we could get those extensions, that would be phenomenal because we could have more GP services, and it is probably easier. At the same time, I am just offering the opportunity to look across the board because the more GPs we can get back the better. I know that GP services are working really complementarily with the Department and I get that feedback from them, but it is just about that chronic shortage we see in the commuter belt. We are putting in the housing, the wastewater and the roads, and it is just that social infrastructure of the likes of GPs to go with it.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-04-21/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-09-21T01:01:08+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-04-21