Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

This year, the Minister and the Department approved the service plan very late in the day. I certainly hope we will not be waiting as long this year. Could I ask, and I do not expect the witnesses to have the information today, about waiting lists? They provided some details on that. The number of patients waiting for inpatient and day case procedures is over 5,000. A further 44,000 - an incredible number and quite a scandal - children are waiting for outpatient appointments. The key thing in this is the waiting times, as opposed to the waiting numbers. Could the witnesses provide the committee with a breakdown of the waiting times within each of those three lists?

The next issue I want to raise is the earlier session, which the witnesses said they saw. Personally, I thought Professor McCormack’s analysis of the nature of the problem was to the point, clear and impressive. Do the witnesses accept the case that Professor McCormack was making about the nature of the problem, which is the competition from the private sector, the competition from adult paediatrics and the general dysfunction and chaos that he referred to?

I was certainly very impressed by his analysis of that and of the steps that needed to be taken to bring about systemic fix, as he called it. Is there a forum to listen to what practitioners are saying about this and the steps that need to be taken? One gets the impression that there are administrators on one side and practitioners on the other and there is very little meeting of minds. Is there interaction between those two groups and is there a shared understanding of the nature of the problem and of what needs to be done?