Our GP system is at breaking point. Every community in the country feels that. People cannot get appointments. Many cannot afford to see a doctor when they are sick. We need more GP training places, fairer supports for struggling practices and real action to keep doctors in local communities. If we want to fix healthcare, this is where we should start. I will highlight a very serious issue affecting newly qualified paramedics. For years, when paramedics completed their training with the National Ambulance Service, they moved straight into permanent positions. That is how it worked for every class before this one but, without warning, the practice has been changed. Graduating paramedics are now being kept on 16-week contracts, with no information about a permanent post or recruitment process. These are people who have worked for years on temporary contracts serving the public and believed they would have job security when they qualified. This sudden change is causing huge stress. West Cork alone stands to lose six front-line staff. I ask that this unfair situation be raised with the highest Minister in the land and resolved urgently. While we are talking about health, we have a major health crisis, whether it is in mental health or ordinary physical health. I spoke last week about Perrott House in Skibbereen but I have received no reply yet from the Taoiseach. He said he would be back to me. Hopefully, that will happen. Perrott House is down to two patients. I was told I was scaremongering when I raised the same issue last year. It had 13 patients only a few years ago, but it is being closed by stealth. The HSE is trying to do it behind the scenes. I do not know what kind of sneaky carry-on it is. It the same with the ambulance service. I raised that, and the SouthDoc service in west Cork over Christmas. The ambulance service is bypassing Bantry hospital on a regular basis because it is full. We now have a crisis situation. People are going up to Cork University Hospital, CUH. I do not want to blame any of the management at CUH or Bantry General Hospital because management and staff are breaking their butts. I saw it with my own eyes last Monday in CUH. There is a chronic situation there with patients flying in from every direction. The bottom line is patients should be looked after as much as we can and as good as we can locally. If people from Castletownbere, Mizen Head and Sheep's Head, and from Kinsale and Clonakilty, are all tearing up into CUH, we have a problem and a bottleneck. Most of them are being kept in an ambulance. When I raised that, and the SouthDoc service being closed over Christmas, all I got from Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael politicians was that I was scaremongering. I was telling the truth. I am not a fool. We know what is going on and it is not being publicised. Bantry hospital has been closed to the public on numerous occasions. It is not good enough.

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