• Patients eligible for free GP visits hold either a medical card (GMS card) or a GP visit card. These ‘public’ patients register on a GMS panel held in the name of a GP in their chosen practice.
• A panel is an administrative unit, not a count of the doctors providing care. Public patients are increasingly cared for by multi-GP practices involving principals, assistants, salaried and sessional GPs, locums, practice nurses and the wider practice team, many of whom do not appear in HSE-held GP contract data.
• Panel numbers on their own are therefore not a measure of GP supply. New panels cannot provide care without GPs, practice teams and consultation rooms.

• Ireland's population grew from 4.86m in 2018 to 5.46m in 2025, an increase of approximately 12%. Despite substantial changes in eligibility policy, the proportion of the population covered by GMS/GP-visit card arrangements remained remarkably stable at about 43%: approximately 2.07m people in 2018 and 2.34m in 2025.
• Growth in absolute numbers covered came almost entirely through increased eligibity for GP-visit cards. GMS eligibility was essentially unchanged (1.565m to 1.553m), while GP-visit card eligibility rose by about 282,000 (56%), from 503,000 to 785,000. A GP-visit card costs the State about one third of a full GMS card, largely because the GMS card includes medication costs.
• Over the same period, the number of GMS panels rose by only about 5%, from 2,463 to 2,591, while the number of large panels (1,500+ patients) rose by 37%.
• Expanded eligibility therefore appears to have been absorbed mainly through larger existing panels and practice teams, rather than through more panels.

• In LHOs around Dublin, the Greater Dublin area and Cork, the biggest growth was in public eligibility among children aged 5 to 11, and this was met more by new panels than by very large ones.
• In older-population, rural and deprived (Local Health Office) LHOs, panel numbers stayed relatively static while the proportion of panels exceeding 1,500 patients increased. This may reflect differences in practice formation, GP availability and infrastructure.
• The national figures may therefore hide two different ways the system has absorbed increased eligibility: new panels in younger urban and commuter areas, and expansion of existing panels in older, more rural and deprived areas. 

What these data cannot show…

• Eligibility figures reflect uptake, not entitlement. Many GPs and patients find the application process for new cards very complicated, and uptake following the recent means-tested DVC expansion has been notably low.
• HSE workforce data uses GMS contract holders as a proxy for GP supply, which misses many assistants and sessional GPs. The College is working with the HSE and the Medical Council to improve this.

• Panel numbers and GP headcount are critical to GP care provision, but they can't reliably tell us how accessible GP services are. A more direct signal is the number of GMS/GP-visit card patients seeking HSE assistance to join a new practice, which speaks to access rather than supply alone.
• Better evidence on where and why patients have difficulty accessing general practice is essential to equitable workforce planning and service development. The College would welcome collaboration to build that evidence.