Madam, - Your columnist Kevin Myers, writing in The Irish Times of July 28th, makes a number of valid points about the manpower (or should it be personpower?) issues facing general practice in Ireland.
However, on two points I must take issue. His suggestion that the expansion of the medical card system to include an additional 200,000 people would require an increase in the number of general practitioners is not correct.
Both the Irish College of General Practitioners and the Irish Medical Organisation have called for this expansion for those in the population at the margin of eligibility, who already attend GPs but for financial reasons are not availing of the services when they should.
A second point concerns a universally free general practitioner service at the point of delivery. This suggestion, proposed most recently by Ms Maev-Ann Wren at the a.g.m. of the Irish College of General Practitioners in Galway in May, was enthusiastically accepted by those present. We don't all know the answer to that and we are prepared to discuss this in public in spite of what Mr Myers suggests in his article.
But as ever in our health service, political will and funding are the issues preventing such an expansion. - Yours, etc.,
Dr GARRETT HAYES,
Lucan Court Medical Centre,
Esker Hill,
Lucan,
Co Dublin.