asked the Minister for Local Government and Public Health whether he will alter the existing regulation requiring dispensary doctors to reside within their dispensary areas by introducing a provision into it leaving discretion with local authority to permit such doctors to live in the immediate vicinity of their districts where transport and communication facilities make it desirable.
Ceisteanna—Questions. Oral Answers. - Dispensary Doctors' Places of Residence.
The reply is in the negative.
Arising out of the Parliamentary Secretary's reply, is he aware that a regulation made long prior to the existence of motor cars and to the ubiquity of telephones, now operates to make the doctor less accessible than he would be if he was residing in a centre immediately adjacent to his dispensary district, where he could have the telephone in his house? Does the Parliamentary Secretary realise that this archaic regulation, instead of achieving its purpose under modern conditions, actually defeats the purpose for which it was originally made?
Under Article 26 of the Dispensary Regulations, the Minister has power in exceptional circumstances, on being satisfied there is sufficient ground for such a course of action, to dispense with the condition of residence within the dispensary district. He already has the power, if he is satisfied the circumstances warrant the exercise of it.
Why does not the Minister consider giving such power to the local authority, the body responsible for the public health of the area? Political pressure has, in certain cases, been brought to bear against doctors to force them, at great personal inconvenience, to live in the centre of the dispensary district when the local people knew perfectly well that if the doctor were only allowed to continue to live where he had been living he would be much more accessible to the sick poor of the dispensary district with the care of which he was charged.