David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

That is the figure we always get. I want to make this point, because it is important. We should not have to put in parliamentary questions to get that total figure. When we are talking about a winter plan to deal with the challenges patients have, I would expect the HSE to know how many people are on waiting lists across all layers of the health service. It should be a big ticket number that is obvious. As we know, we have acute hospitals, both inpatient and outpatient. We have community waiting lists, CHOs, dietetics, audiology and all of that. We have dental waiting lists. We have mental health and child and adolescent mental health services, CAMHS. We have children's disability network teams. I think there are about 210,000 people on diagnostic waiting lists and we have home care. Yet no matter how many times I ask this question, I cannot get a figure from the HSE on how many people are on all health waiting lists.