Aontú Leader Peadar Tóibín has responded to a new report that reveals many single GP surgeries will not be able to replace retiring doctors, leaving large swathes of the country without access to a local doctor.
The Meath West TD said:
Parts of Mayo, west Donegal, Limerick, Tipperary, Wexford, Leitrim and Galway are facing a GP crisis as many older doctors are retiring and not being replaced, meaning communities will be left with no local GP to cater for any health needs and they may need to travel further to access care.
In areas with a growing population this problem will become more prominent, and yet the Department of Health’s solution is to simply recruit more doctors from abroad.
According to the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI), 442 Irish doctors were issued with temporary work visas for Australia in 2022. That is more than half of the cohort of 725 who graduated in 2021.
A survey released in the Irish Journal of Medical Science in 2023 outlined that in 2021, of the 2016 cohort of doctors awarded Certificates of Satisfactory Completion of Specialist Training (CSCST), 68% are employed in Ireland and 32% are abroad or unknown – a third are not working in the Irish health service.
A 2016 survey found that only a quarter of doctors and a half of nurses and midwives intended to return to practice in Ireland in the future and that the longer health professionals remain abroad, the less likely they are to return to their home countries.
The Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) projects a 40–54% increase in demand for long-term care by 2030, which will require more doctors, particularly in primary care and specialties like geriatrics and psychiatry. A 2020 OECD report suggests Ireland needs to train more doctors domestically to reduce reliance on foreign-trained professionals, as 40.4% of doctors are foreign-educated.
What the government are overlooking is that many essential workers such as doctors and nurses are leaving because of the state of the health service – even those who have just graduated. No-one wants to work in an environment that is not safe, manageable or healthy.
We recently launched Operation Shamrock to try and bring these essential workers back, btu much of this will depend on the HSE being brought up to a level where professionals want to work for the health service and are not treated simply as mudguards for Ministerial incompetence.”
