Ba mhaith liom cúpla focal a rá faoi shláinte na tíre agus an fhadbh nach bhfuil dóthain dochtúirí teaghlaigh ann don daonra. I ask the Leader to invite the Minister for Health to the House to discuss the chronic shortage and lack of GPs throughout the country. I have been contacted by a number of people from different parts of the country who have told me stories of people moving into towns and being told that no GP was capable of taking them on. They are all snowed under with work as things stand. I know of a family in County Monaghan who moved to Carrickmacross and of two who moved to Monaghan town. The families tramped around both towns trying to find a GP to take them on with no success. The question is where these people are meant to go and what happens if one of their children or if a parent gets sick. We cannot send them to accident and emergency departments as these are overcrowded as it is and we cannot send them to the doctor on call because that service is not set up properly for that purpose. Without a properly functioning primary care service, we are in serious trouble. Things have got to crisis point and it is time the Minister for Health came to the House to advise us and, indeed, the people of this country what he intends to do about the chronic shortage of GPs throughout the State.

The lead story in The Irish Times today is that An Post has warned that it will be unable to pay its wage bill next month. That is the main story in our national newspaper today. There are clearly many issues about An Post and the future. We had some debate around the fringes of an amendment with the Minister yesterday but we need him to come back now. Last week, we were told that possibly 80 rural post offices would close. The CEO of An Post has rejected on the record an injection of €56 million in cash as a result of the Kerr report. He says it is not doable and that he cannot operate within that. He claims the overall operation is losing a substantial amount of money and that it needs a bigger and more sustainable plan. An Post itself has commissioned its own report from the McKinley Consulting Group which will report back to the board. That is somewhat different from the Kerr report which was commissioned earlier.

We now hear that a survival operation must be put together. An Post must be sustained. However, this is all very different to the programme for Government, which I read this morning. Page 48 sets out a new model for An Post. There is a commitment to community hubs and a new banking system in An Post. The Government committed to investigating the German Sparkasse model for the development of local banks in post offices, in addition to making them a hub for social welfare and motor tax services that would keep post offices in place in rural communities. That was part of the Government's commitment to sustaining rural communities. The programme for Government also referred to the establishment and further expansion of the post office network across the country. Could the Leader arrange to have the Minister with responsibility for An Post come to the House? All the post offices and communities around the country need to know what the Government policy is and what is the plan. There is no better person than the Minister to come to the House. It would be very helpful if the Leader could facilitate a debate in the Seanad on post offices.