The lack of a national conference centre in Ireland was criticised yesterday by organisers at the close of the 15th World Conference of Family Doctors (WONCA). Over 4,000 doctors attended it, with 1,000 partners, giving a £10 million boost to the economy.
Dr Michael Boland, chairman of the organising committee, said a national conference centre in Dublin could host conferences of this size all year round. But the organisation by the Irish College of General Practitioners involved an incredible amount of work and money, he said. When the ICGP made its pitch in 1992 to host WONCA in Dublin, they believed a national centre would have been built by now.
Almost twice as many doctors came to Dublin as attended the last WONCA conference in Hong Kong. The venue and the theme of the conference proved a "winning combination", he said.
"The conference was enormously successful in terms of the number of people who came. It is extraordinary that Dublin, given how much it has going for it, does not have a national conference centre," said Dr Boland, a Skibbereen GP, who was elected president-elect of WONCA.
He said the Department of Health had been very supportive, but as a result the ICGP had had to spend £1.8 million on the conference, which included constructing an auditorium for 3,000 people and 30 separate workshop rooms in the RDS Simmonscourt. More than 1,500 presentations were delivered during the four-day conference. The next WONCA will be in Durban, South Africa, in 2001.