Hundreds of GPs protest at Dáil over cutbacks
The National Association of General Practitioners, who staged the protest attended by around 250 GPs, said general practice was being destroyed because successive governments had refused to fund the service.
NAGP president, Dr Conor McGee, said GPs had a 40% cut in income as a result of cuts to fees and allowances since the introduction of emergency financial legislation in 2009.
He said rural practices in particular had been economically drained by FEMPI (financial emergency legislation) cuts, to the point that rural practice was no longer viable.
“We are here today because general practice — the business of caring for people in the community, is failing,” he said.
“We are now failing to attract young doctors into general practice for the first time ever,” said Dr McGee, a GP in Scariff, Co Clare.
He said 47% of doctors who qualified in general practice in Ireland in the last 10 years were gone. “The figure in the United Kingdom is 6%.”
Dr McGee said there was a crisis of funding, a crisis of manpower and a crisis of morale, and the solution was to reverse the last two rounds of cuts.
He urged Health Minister Leo Varadkar to redirect 2% of the health spend into general practice every year for the next three years.
Wicklow GP and RTÉ’s Operation Transformation doctor, Ciara Kelly, said the protest by around 250 GPs really was a last resort.
“It takes a lot to mobilise GPs. We are by nature a conservative group, middle-aged, middle-class. It takes a lot to get us on the streets,” she said.
“This protest and the fact that you are all here today is unprecedented, but a 40% cut to the funding of general practice is also unprecedented. And I think most of us felt that we were running out of options.”
Dr Kelly said she did not want to be a bystander to the systematic, slow destruction of general practice – death by a thousand cuts.
“I did not want to allow the job that I love and that I have spent the last 20 years training at and working in, be destroyed.”
Mr Varadkar, who is due to meet members of the NAGP in November, said he fully acknowledged that GPs were under pressure, both financially and in terms of workload. The same problems were facing everyone in the health service.
“Nevertheless, more GPs are taking up contracts with the HSE. Latest figures show there were 2,416 GPs contracted to the HSE in April 2014 compared to 2,258 at the end of 2010,” he said.
The minister also said payments to GPs under the GMS contract had risen to €447m in 2013, compared to €438m in 2011.
“I strongly encourage GPs to seize the opportunity presented by the new contract negotiations.”
General practitioners from all over Ireland gathered outside Leinster House in Dublin. Pictures: Photocall, Collins
“It is touch and go whether I can survive,” he said.
“I was a GP in England and have been qualified for 25 years. I have been in practice in Co Waterford for five years.”
Dr Janes said he now had 50% more patients than when he started. It looked like a thriving practice, yet there were months when he had no money to pay himself.
Dr Janes, who employs five people on a part-time basis, said income from private patients had disappeared and income from the HSE had been slashed.
He was the only rural GP for 200 square miles.
— Evelyn Ring
“This protest is a last gasp from GPs like us to enlighten both our politicians and the public to the plight of their system of general practice in Ireland,” said Dr Punch. Dr Punch said his family-run practice had suffered because of the drastic cutbacks made by the State in recent years. “I am not getting the resources to be able to keep on my complement of secretaries. I can’t pay my nurse adequately. “I have had to let one of my doctors go, so that obviously impacts on the safety and the adequacy of the service that I have. “Una is off work. She is pregnant but she has not had a salary for two years. If she was not my wife, there is no way I would have two doctors in the practice.” Dr Punch said 1,100 of his patients were medical card holders and made up almost 90% of the practice.
Dr O’Carroll said he joined the protest because general practice was being gradually destroyed. He said he qualified as a GP 35 years ago and had been in practice in Waterford City for 20 years.
“I have a very big GMS list. It is at least 95% of my practice and, after withholding tax each month, I am paid approximately €13 per patient per month — about 1,250 patients.
“I am not breaking even. I am all the time looking at my bank balance. Since the last round of FEMPI (State) cuts, I have had to do extra out-of-hours shifts all around the south-east at weekends and in the evenings on top of the work that I have to do in my own practice. Things are very bad.”
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