The Government's plan to extend free GP care to the entire population has been scrapped for the time being.

It is reported today that the Government will not go ahead this year with the first phase of the extension of free GP care, to long term illness patients.

The Government had promised to extend GP care to the entire population by 2015, but this target is now unlikely to be met.

Instead, it is looking at alternative ways of phasing in free GP care, according to the Irish Times.

These include phasing it in over a number of years by extending the free scheme gradually to people in specific age categories.

The Government had said previously that the legal difficulties of moving from the current income-based free GP care medical card scheme to an illness-based extension of free GP care had been the main reason for the hold-up in starting the phased implementation of the scheme.

The precise legal difficulties involved, however, remained unclear, especially as there has already been a long-term illness scheme for free drugs in operation for many years.

It is believed that finding the money to pay for free GP care has also proved to be a major challenge at a time of major curbs in health spending.

Under the first phase of free GP care, patients already in the long-term illness scheme were to have received GP visit cards this year. The Government then planned to grant free GP visits to patients on the high tech drugs scheme, following which free GP care would extend to the entire population by 2015.

Universal access to free GP care is a key component of Health Minister James Reilly's planned health reforms, which are built around the introduction of universal health insurance (UHI) with equal access to hospital and primary care for all by 2016.

The apparent long-fingering of free GP care will cast major doubt over the timetable for the Government's health reform plans.