At least 50% more General Practitioners are needed to meet current levels of demand, according to the Irish College of General Practitioners.
An ICGP conference taking place in Dublin has heard the workload of GPs has substantially increased following the Covid-19 pandemic.
The event was also told that members face substantial difficulties in finding locum doctors when necessary.
Locum doctors are those that provide temporary cover to regular GPs. This means that doctors are struggling to take time off from work.
The Medical Director of the ICGP has said the number of GPs need to increase by at least 50% to 6,000 to properly meet current patient demand.
Dr Diarmuid Quinlan, who is also a GP in Glanmire in Cork, said many patients are waiting days or even weeks to see a doctor.
"We are in the middle of a workforce crisis and a workload crisis," he said.
"This is impacting on our patient's ability to see a doctor in a timely fashion.
"Many patients are now waiting days or even weeks to see a doctor and many doctors are finding it really difficult to get holiday locums.
"Many of our GP colleagues have not had any holidays for a year or two because such is the shortage of GPs that we cannot get GPs to cover when doctors are on holidays," Dr Quinlan added.
One doctor working in Co Mayo covering Clare Island has said that she is hopefully she might be able to go away on holiday this year.
"Our workload has increased ....and it's more difficult for GPs to get people to come into our practices to do locum or to work full time in General Practice in rural areas," Dr Noreen Linin Curtis said.
"We get very little out of hours support and personally I would be on pretty much 24/7 for my patients," she said.
Another doctor based in north Co Clare said that in some cases there are no applicants to replace retiring GPs.
"What's happened in north Clare is a real metaphor for what's happening elsewhere in rural practice, we have a local GP practice in Lisdoonvarna - which is not a small town - and the local GP is retiring and it's been advertised a number of times and there are no applicants unfortunately," Dr Liam Glynn said.
He said a strategic review on workforce that the Minister for Health has called needs to get up and running as soon as possible.
Dr Glynn said resources and support are required, along with a national funding model for GP placements in general practice.
"We have to expose our medical students to general practice as early as possible in their career. It's mad to think that medical students can go through their medical student career and spent most of it in hospital."
