Debate contribution: Primary Care: Extreme Pressures

Debate contribution by Miss Órlaithí Flynn on 14 May 2024.

MLA

Miss Órlaithí Flynn

Party at the time

Sinn Féin

Date

14 May 2024

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Private Members' Business

Heading

Primary Care: Extreme Pressures

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 4490299

Read the official Assembly record

Text

I welcome the opportunity to speak on the motion. I am happy to support the motion and the SDLP's amendment. It is important to acknowledge at the outset that, as mentioned by other Members, primary care includes community pharmacists as well as our GPs, nurses, mental health practitioners, social workers and health visitors, who all play such a crucial part in providing healthcare for the public in our local communities. I cannot complain about the care that I have received from my local GP surgery in west Belfast, Ballyowen, or my local pharmacy, Coopers. They have been dealing with me and my family for years, and I do not have any complaints. I had my wee son Torin a year-and-a-half ago, so the health visitor has been coming and going to visit us, and I cannot fault any of the care that I have received. However, I am conscious that not everyone has had the same experience. Given the pressures outlined in the motion and the amendment, different GP practices, pharmacies, health visitors and all the rest will feel different types of pressure. That will have an impact in that not everyone will have the same experience when it comes to how many phone calls it takes to get through to the local surgery or how long they have to wait to see a GP or a health professional. It is important to note the positive experiences that people are having. It has been said by all the Members who have spoken that no one is taking away from all the brilliant work that GPs and health professionals in primary care carry out. However, no one is in denial over the massive pressure that they are under. Hopefully, we can help to support them. Over the past number of weeks, we have received briefings at the Health Committee, and MLAs have been receiving emails from GP surgeries and practices from right across the North. To be fair, from the emails that we are getting, we can sense the stress and exhaustion that exists: they have highlighted the different pressures that they are genuinely under. The Minister will be aware of all that. Some of the emails tell us, in their own words, that primary care and general practice are at the point of failure and are failing because of the strain that they are under. They talk about widespread destabilisation and, as we have heard, the increasing number of practices that have had to hand back their contracts, which is linked to there not being enough investment in the workforce. Those are the same issues that cut right across all the problems that we have across the health system at the moment. There is no point in listing the Members, but Alan, Colin, Danny and most of the Members who have spoken mentioned the number of practices that have closed. There is the really stark statistic that one third of practices are in receipt of additional support and intervention from the crisis team. That is a really high number.

It is really worrying that a third of all of the practices that we have in the small place that we live in are getting crisis support from that specialised team.

There is also the problem of all of the GPs who are leaving. As we know, a lot of them are going South for better pay and conditions. The arguments that have been made in the debate are ones that we receive directly from the general practices and GPs. I am sure that the Minister is across all of the detail already. It is about what we can do to help the situation. Everyone has touched on the MDTs issue. It is a really worrying postcode lottery. The fact is that, of the 17 federations, only one has the full complement of staff. The intention is there to expand on that, but it is not good enough to expand it from one GP federation to three: it needs to be across all 17. I know that, in an ideal world, with an ideal budget, the Minister would do that, but it is so unfair to leave certain people —

— in a postcode lottery, where one GP surgery has an MDT and the other does not. Hopefully, with today's motion and the amendment, we will see some progress on those issues.

731 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

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Assessed 21 October 2026 at 10:23 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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