Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Thank goodness the clock is not being used today, Chair. Thank you for all that. I will respond to some of it. I will pass over to the Minister of State, Deputy Naughton, on the public health response to obesity and then other public health responses she may want to cover. I will ask Louise McGirr to come in on the section 39 bodies, on which there is progress, and some of the detail there.

The common theme I heard through all the issues the Chair raised is access. We have high-quality services and we must have access, hence the waiting list action plan and the falling waiting lists, while always acknowledging that they are not yet where they need to be. It takes time to get down to the agreed ten- to 12-week targets.

On obesity, the particular patient to whom the Chair referred, and there have been one or two others, did get those letters with the multiyear waiting lists on them. I went directly to the head of acutes within the HSE and said we simply cannot have this. Nobody can stand over this. Professor Donal O'Shea is one of the clinical leads on the new bariatrics programme. I met with him and one of his colleagues who presented to me in 2022. They put a very compelling case forward to the effect that we do not have the bariatric services we need, people are going to Turkey and other places, some of them are getting quite ill, and this is a service we simply need to have in this country. I was convinced and fully funded the national roll-out. I did not think they would be able to spend the money I allocated. They asked for several million in recurrent funding to hire many people throughout the country. Professor O'Shea and his colleagues assured me they had an entire army of people ready to step into the breach. It turns out they did, and the services are now scaling up. They are getting the access they need and hiring the people they need. The service was funded last year, so they hired through last year and will be hiring again this year to build up those services. It will take them a bit of time. Where we need to get to, which is the only reason to fund the services and all these extra healthcare professionals, is to make sure people can get access when they need it. That has been prioritised. In fact, in the waiting list action plan, obesity and bariatrics were one of the three specific priority areas we reported on every month. I am happy to say good progress has been made and we now need to see those waiting lists come right down, not just for Loughlinstown, from where Professor O'Shea and others work, but across the country. That will remain a priority.