One permanent doctor for more than 4,000 people on the Beara Peninsula demonstrates the need to provide extra funding to attract GPs to peripheral areas.
According to public representatives in west Cork, the terms of the CLÁR (Ceantair Laga Árd Riachtanais) programme need to be extended to provide this funding.
At the moment, CLÁR is confined to capital programmes in designated rural areas which have suffered drastic depopulation.
On the remote Beara Peninsula, one of 16 CLÁR areas, a second permanent GP post has remained vacant for 20 months.
While recruitment of GPs is a general problem outside cities, areas like the Beara were "doubly unique" because of their peripherality, said Mr Vivian O'Callaghan, a Fianna Fáil county councillor and member of the Southern Health Board.
There have been around eight locums so far in the post in Castletownbere, but despite advertising the position on three occasions, no permanent doctor has been attracted. A recruitment agency has recently been engaged, according to the health board.
"The locums are providing an excellent service but there is great disquiet among the people at the lack of continuity," said Mr O'Callaghan.
He said the board needed to be able to pay doctors "a good deal over the odds" to get GPs and their families into the area.
"There is an excellent quality of life, with sailing clubs and so on," he added.
Mr Denis O'Donovan TD (FF) is to meet Mr Ó Cuív, the Minister for Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs, on the idea of offering incentives under the CLÁR programme. He said the lack of GPs in CLÁR areas was going to escalate with retirements in the next five years and something had to be done.
Mr Denis Reagan, chairman of the Beara Action Group, has called the failure to recruit a second GP "a disgrace".
"The post hasn't been advertised since last January," he said. The people in Beara feel they have "been left way behind".
"You can't compare places like Listowel with us. They can't fill a sixth post. We can't fill a second. We have nowhere to go but east."
He said the problem was particularly hard on older people. As most of those recruited were non-nationals, there was often a language barrier adding to the discomfort of the elderly.
He rejected the health board's suggestion the area would be more attractive to GPs were a doctors' co-op in place .
He said it was the biggest issue on the peninsula at the moment.
There is no female doctor and women have to travel to Glengarriff or Bantry, round trips of up to 90 miles.
Since the closure of the maternity unit at Bantry in the mid-1980s, pregnant women are 102 miles from the maternity hospitals in Cork, and often have to book into hospital one week in advance of their due date.