David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

My third question is one on which I asked the clerk for clarity. We had a very lengthy discussion about waiting lists with the Department and the HSE some weeks ago. They were here to discuss waiting lists. I agreed that reducing the length of time people are waiting is the most important thing. I know that has reduced and I acknowledged that. That is great. However, I asked a simple question, which was how many people are on waiting lists across all elements of healthcare, namely, acute, which is broken up into inpatient, outpatient and others; community, which can be dietetics, ophthalmology, occupational therapy, speech and language therapy, mental health, child and adolescent mental health services, CAMHS, and home help; diagnostics, which is a whole different area; chronic disease management programmes, CDMPs; and so on. I still have not got that. We had a very lengthy discussion. We were told by the officials that they did not have that information available, yet they were coming in to discuss waiting lists. They were not able to tell me how many people are on all the waiting lists. That is one figure which could be broken down if needs be. Does that figure exist and can it finally be given to us? If we do not understand the scale of the problem, how are we going to fix it? What I am asking for is clear: the total number of people on all HSE waiting lists. What is the total figure? How does it break down? How long are people waiting?