David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I will move on to hospital wait times. I raise these questions in the context of subhead J2 and the €200 million that was allocated to fund the winter plan. I had this conversation with the head of the HSE recently. Outpatient wait times are now out of control, if we are to be honest. At the end of October 2015, there 396,000 people waiting to see a consultant. At the end of October this year, that figure was 612,000. More worryingly, the number of patients waiting 18 months or longer has gone from 13,353 to 153,000. Much of this predates Covid. Obviously, Covid has complicated the problem and added to it but the vast majority of those increases occurred in the years 2016, 2017 and 2018. I will not go through all the increases but they have been incremental every year. In the context of the additional money the Minister says has been spent on nurses, doctors and beds, does the HSE have a plan? Does it have a target to reduce outpatient and inpatient wait times? For example, would it hope that by the end of 2021, outpatient wait times will be reduced by 5%, 10% or 20%?