A WEST CLARE GP has clashed with the Minister for Health over the continued lack of investment in primary healthcare in the region.
Health Minister, Jennifer Carroll MacNeill (FG) was in Kilkee on Monday morning where she met with locals to try gauge a better understanding of the difficulties experienced when trying to access emergency healthcare.
Locals in Kilkee only had fifteen minutes notice of her arrival but she did engage with members of the public outside Hayes’ Shop on O’Connell Street. “We are looking at everything possible to improve service delivery in West Clare, I’m standing here looking out in the Atlantic to try to understand”.
Among those to air their views with the Minister was Dr Tom Nolan, a GP in West Clare for over forty years. He ran for Fine Gael in the 2024 General Election and previously spent ten years as an Independent member of Kilkee Town Council.
Dr Nolan told the Minister, “I am being rude but it is on behalf of people I have served for forty years here, I do know the difficulties and the realities and talking about virtual models is really premature, what this area needs is investment in primary care, investment in at home help level, all the other interventions you’ve heard people talking about but real investment not talking about investment and certainly not the insult of giving us a new hospital down in Limerick when what we actually need is investment in people, getting people to set up a surgery in Kilkee which soon will have no doctor and Kilrush”.
Minister Carroll MacNeill replied, “We’re not speaking at odds with each other, we’re talking about a range of options”.
More investment is needed, Dr Nolan stressed, “Being virtual will not solve the department, proficiency in care delivery, investment in continued professional development of GPs and broadening the spectrum of delivery of Clare”.
An offer for Dr Nolan to visit Donegal with the Minister to look at how virtual care is delivered for long-term remote care was issued.
It isn’t the first time that Dr Nolan took on the political establishment. In 2011, Dr Nolan hit out at then Government Clare TDs, Joe Carey (FG), Pat Breen (FG) and Michael McNamara (LAB) on the lack of work they did to highlight the difficulties caused by the removal of emergency services from Ennis and Nenagh hospitals. He said neither of the trio had “ruffled the feathers” of then Health Minister, Dr James Reilly (FG) regarding the impact of reconfiguration.
Dr Nolan had been an active volunteer of the Ennis Hospital Action Group for up to seven years which fought unsuccessfully against the removal of the A&E in Ennis.
