Joan Collins (Dublin South Central, Independents 4 Change)
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566. To ask the Minister for Health the number of persons on the waiting list to see a consultant maxillofacial surgeon at St. James's Hospital; and the average waiting times to see the consultant. [5635/24]

Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail)
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This Government recognises that waiting times for many scheduled appointments and procedures are too long and continue to be impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic. The Department of Health continues to work with the HSE and the National Treatment Purchase Fund (NTPF) to identify ways to improve access to care. The 2023 Waiting List Action Plan built on the foundational work done in previous plans, achieving significant progress in relation to waiting lists, including advancements made on overall waiting list reduction for the second year in a row, and progress made in addressing long waiting times.The Department of Health is working with the HSE to finalise both the End of Year Report against the 2023 WLAP as well as the new WLAP 2024, which will take account of learnings from 2023 as well as the funding envelope provided for 2024.For 2024, funding totalling €407 million is being allocated to tackle waiting lists with €332 million of this allocated to the 2024 WLAP, and the remaining €75 million targeted at various measures to alleviate community/primary care waiting lists.The funding will encompass core HSE activity, additionality provided through both the NTPF and the HSE, as well as progressing new service developments to further reform elective care, and will facilitate the next steps in the multi-annual approach towards achieving timely and transparent access to high-quality scheduled care for everyone, where and when they need it, in line with Sláintecare reforms.With regard to the information requested by the Deputy, the NTPF has advised that the health system does not collect the data necessary to calculate true average wait times. In particular, the time to treatment of patients who have already received their care is not collected. The NTPF collects data on patients currently on the waiting list. The number of patients waiting and the average time that these patients have been waiting is provided here.