Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Access is the big issue. I acknowledge that some progress has been made on reducing inpatient waiting lists through the deployment of the National Treatment Purchase Fund, NTPF. That figure is beginning to come down, thank goodness. However, right across the system access is continually worsening. For the first time ever, we have more than 550,000 people on the outpatient waiting list. The number of people waiting for more than a year and a half is particularly striking. The figure, which was 13,000 about three years, has climbed to more than 800,000 people. That is an 800% increase in just three years in the number of men, women and children who are waiting to see a hospital consultant. We all know that children around the country have been waiting up to three and half years just to get an initial special needs assessment and therapy in various areas. I looked at the current waiting lists while preparing for this meeting. As well as the longest outpatient hospital waiting list ever, they show massive geographic variance in waiting times. There is a postcode lottery that differs in different parts of the system. More than 40,000 people are waiting for an outpatients appointment in Galway University Hospital. In Limerick University Hospital, the figure is nearly 35,000 people. In University Hospital Waterford it is 40,000 and the figure for Tallaght hospital is more than 30,000. In other areas such as waiting lists for physiotherapy, there has been a big spike in Waterford, for example, where nearly 2,500 people are awaiting an initial physiotherapy appointment. In County Wicklow, more than 1,000 people are waiting for an initial assessment for occupational therapy. A postcode lottery exists depending on whether one needs to see a doctor, a physiotherapist, an occupational therapy or another specialist.

I have a broad question for Mr. Reid and the Minister. Given that there has been an unprecedented increase in healthcare funding, with nearly €3.5 billion extra provided in the past few years, why are people waiting longer than ever to be diagnosed by doctors and receive treatment? What is going on that these two things are occurring at the same time?