Mayo TD hits back at 'scaremongering' claim over threatened loss of Westport GP practice
Mayo TD Paul Lawless has hit back after being accused of 'scaremongering' by Fine Gael Deputy Keira Keogh for raising the threatened loss of an established GP practice in Westport.
The Knock-based representative hit back: "Listening to worried patients is not scaremongering – it is our job.
"I was rather surprised to hear Deputy Keira Keogh accuse me of scaremongering.
"I did not invent this problem. Patients contacted me because they were worried. I listened to them and I brought their concerns to the floor of Dáil Éireann.
"Those patients have now received a message from their GP stating plainly that the surgery is being sold and that she has been “left with no other option” but to resign as their GP from November 30.
"So I have a simple question for Deputy Keogh: are those patients scaremongers too?
"It is a peculiar form of public representation that regards raising constituents' concerns as frightening them, but regards attacking the representative who raised those concerns as reassuring them.
"The facts are remarkably straightforward. The premises is being sold. An established GP wants to continue practising.
"Hundreds of patients want continuity of care. The obstacle is premises. When I raised this directly with the Minister for Health, the Minister admitted she was not even aware of the situation.
"That rather demolishes the suggestion that everything was safely in hand before I raised the alarm.
"I welcome the fact that Deputy Keogh has now engaged publicly with the issue. Better late than never.
"But it is difficult to escape the irony that her first instinct appears to have been to criticise the TD who responded to patients rather than acknowledge why those patients were contacting another TD in the first place.
"More importantly, Deputy Keogh is glaringly missing the point.
"She tells us that the HSE is recruiting another GP. Good. Westport needs more GPs.
"But why should recruiting one GP require losing another?
"Replacing one doctor with another is not an increase in GP capacity. It is arithmetic masquerading as progress.
"The obvious objective should be to retain the GP we already have while recruiting additional doctors. Does the deputy know we have a vast GP shortage already.
"Westport has an established doctor, an established practice and hundreds of patients. The immediate difficulty is finding suitable premises from which that doctor can continue to practise.
"That is the problem I asked the government to solve.
"Deputy Keogh says space in the Primary Care Centre has already been allocated. Fine. Then examine every other option: underutilised HSE accommodation, temporary or modular facilities, alternative public buildings or suitable private premises.
"What I will not accept is the defeatist proposition that somehow it is beyond the ingenuity of the State to find suitable accommodation for a GP who wants to continue treating patients.
"We seem to have reached the curious position where Fine Gael's answer to a GP shortage is to celebrate the prospect of replacing a GP we are about to lose.
"It is not scaremongering to report the facts. It is my job. I would respectfully suggest that elderly patients are perfectly capable of reading the message sent to them by their own doctor informing them that she will cease being their GP from November 30.
"They did not need Paul Lawless to frighten them. They needed their public representatives to fight for them.
"That is precisely what I did.
"This should not be about political egos or who gets the photograph when a solution is eventually found. If Deputy Keogh can secure premises tomorrow, I will congratulate her.
"But I make no apology whatsoever for acting when patients contacted me. I would have expected Deputy Keogh to work together with me on this instead of taking this unusual direction instead.
"My position remains very simple: retain the GP we have, recruit the GP we need, and stop pretending that swapping one for the other solves Mayo's shortage of doctors.
"That is not scaremongering.
"It is common sense."