A growing proportion of doctors practising in Ireland are women, and increasing numbers qualified outside the EU and Britain, new figures show.The latest medical workforce intelligence report, published on Monday by the Medical Council, says women accounted for 47.6 per cent of clinically active doctors last year, continuing a “slight but steady” increase in recent years – from 47.2 per cent in 2024 and 47 per cent in 2023. Among general practitioners (GPs), women account for 53 per cent of the total workforce of 5,017.“The proportion of female doctors will most likely continue to increase as older male doctors retire ...[so] exploring and understanding the female GP workforce and their career choices is crucial to planning a sustainable future medical workforce,” the report says.Almost a third of doctors completed their training outside Britain and the EU. The report notes 56.6 per cent of doctors obtained their basic medical qualification in Ireland; 13.9 per cent in the EU or UK; and 29.5 per cent outside Ireland, the EU or Britain. This continues a year-on-year rise, from 27.8 per cent in 2024 and 25.7 per cent in 2023, of this latter cohort. The most common country of qualification for international graduates was Pakistan, accounting for 41.7 per cent of the international graduate cohort, followed by Sudan accounting for 20.3 per cent.In all there were 22,257 clinically active doctors practising medicine in Ireland last year.Their mean age was 43.6 years, with approximately one in five aged 55 or older and approaching typical retirement age. The gender split was almost even across all age groups except the 55 or older cohort, where 66 per cent were men.Almost a third of doctors said they “found it difficult” to provide a patient with “sufficient care” at least once a week, in response to a question on patient safety.The proportion who found this – 27.6 per cent – was up from 26.1 per cent in 2024.Asked to identify the “main barriers” to patient care from a list of options, the most often selected was “pressure on workloads”. This accounted for 16.7 per cent of all responses and was chosen by 59 per cent of doctors. That was followed by “time spent on bureaucracy” and “overcrowding”. GPs reported the greatest strain of any group. This group reported the highest rate of difficulty, with 34.7 per cent experiencing barriers at least weekly. [ What do Irish experts think about controversial ADHD claims?Opens in new window ]The leading barriers were bureaucracy and administration, workload and difficulty accessing specialist opinion. Just over 10 per cent of GPs worked more than 48 hours a week, with a significant proportion of this accounted for by administration rather than face-to-face patient care. “Significant workload burden outside of the direct patient consultation can impact GP retention and patient safety,” the report adds.