Robbie Gallagher (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

There are 42,300 people on a public waiting list for eye care in this country. The National Treatment Purchase Fund figures released in December last year showed 33,268 were on the outpatient eye care waiting list, with more than 12,100 of those waiting longer than a year. There were 9,108 people awaiting inpatient eye procedures, with nearly 1,000 waiting more than a year. These figures have further increased to 9,463 at the end of last month. The figures show many of our children and adults wait too long for public eye care. These delays negatively affect their long-term eye health, independence, education and quality of life in many cases.

There is a solution. It is heartening to hear the optometrists say they have the capacity to provide public eye care services to children over eight years of age and across all age cohorts. They have the expertise and the necessary equipment and they are asking the HSE and Department of Health to engage with them on rolling this out. There are more than 300 optometry practices and 700 practitioners. They are all highly trained, have state-of-the-art equipment and are ready to do business. According to them, it is 50% less expensive to provide routine examinations, monitoring and care in the community via local optometrists than it would be in the hospital system.

It appears we have a problem but a clear solution. I have raised this issue a number of times in this House and am disappointed more progress has not been made on it. We speak often in this and the other House about implementing aspects of Sláintecare, and this is a practical and simple strand of it. I ask that we write to the Minister for Health and invite him to the Chamber at the earliest opportunity to discuss how we can treat the eye care problems of our young people and adults. We seem to have a solution at hand.