Practices in Northern Ireland are to get a package of support worth more than £5 million, it has been announced.

The cash includes a £1 million allocation for a scheme to attract doctors to areas with recruitment problems together with £3 million to help practices through winter pressures, health minister Robin Swann said. There is another £800,000 for out of hours services and a commitment to continue work on indemnity problems. The region’s department of health will also be running a project on access and investigating how technology – such as improved phone systems – might help.

Mr Swann said: “My Department is taking action to address the root causes of these issues in service. This includes increasing the number of GP training places in Northern Ireland to an all-time high of 121 and providing an additional £1.5m investment to support continued staff recruitment to the MDT model. That said, there is a need to do more in the short term to help address the pressures in GP services and ensure that people can still access their doctor when they need them. The package of support I am announcing today will help strengthen GP services through the winter period, as well as providing targeted help to those practices that are most at risk. Planning for this winter is ongoing across health and social care.”

The British Medical Association’s GP committee welcomed the news.

Chair Dr Alan Stout said: “Today’s announcement from the minister is welcome and we can see that he understands the problems we are facing; it will hopefully help in the medium to long-term. But unfortunately, it will not be a solution to the problems many practices are experiencing right now. The Attract, Recruit, Retain scheme may help practices recruit new GPs but with a well-documented ageing workforce, and with a quarter of our GPs over the age of 55, we need to ensure that we retain GPs as well in order to stabilise and grow general practice.”