Vol. 486 No. 2
134 Mr. Stagg asked the Minister for Health and Children if he will provide details of the GP development fund; the manner in which it operates; the total value of the fund; the criteria, if any, for its allocation; if he will give details of where these allocations were made in 1997; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [2209/98]
In the context of the review of the general medical services scheme that took place in 1992, and agreement reached in relation thereto with the Irish Medical Organisation in which all parties formally committed themselves to the achievement of responsible and cost-effective prescribing, the general practice development fund was established in 1993 with a value of £12.5 million and renewed annually since then. In 1997, the inflator-adjusted fund for that year was £13.95 million.
The fund is an integral feature of the State's commitment to the development of general practice and is used to promote developments in line with the blueprint document The Future of General Practice in Ireland. The agreement referred to above provided for the general allocation of the fund and in 1997 the distribution, in line with that agreement, was as follows: first, £4,65 million in respect of the provision of realistic rostering and out of hours arrangements; second, £4 million to assist towards practice maintenance, equipment and development; third, £1.6 million in grant aid to facilitate the employment of practice secretaries and or nurses; and fourth £3.7 million for specific general practice developments, principally the ongoing funding of general practice units in all the individual health boards and such other developmental projects as were determined by the Department of Health and Children and the health boards to be desirable either locally, regionally or nationally. Moneys under the fund were also made available in 1997 to St. James's Hospital for the establishment of a national centre for pharmaco-economics and the Mater Hospital for the national development of the healthlink GP electronic messaging service. Funding for specific projects was made in the light of submissions made by health boards in respect of general practice projects either under way or contemplated by them.
Payments for the fund under the first three headings were made directly to general practitioners pro rata to their GMS panel sizes. Moneys under the fourth heading were made available directly to health boards or the other body concerned. It might be noted that this last component of the overall fund is the discretionary element of the fund which has come to be referred to, by some, as the GP development fund, notwithstanding the other elements in the total fund.
