Liam Quaide (Cork East, Social Democrats)

I want to raise a frustration that I am experiencing regarding the answering of parliamentary questions. I would be grateful if the HSE could address that locally. On 8 April, I submitted parliamentary questions to all regional health areas separately on primary care psychology waiting lists. I asked for the years and months spent waiting, as well as the longest wait time. What the HSE will initially send back is a category of “+52 weeks” waiting in addition to the shorter waits. The period of +52 weeks is largely meaningless because it could be 53 weeks or, in the case of Cork-Kerry and other regional health areas, could mean up to 300 weeks, and that is no exaggeration. I have yet to receive any response from the Dublin and north-east regional health area and the Dublin and midlands regional health area, although I have followed up on those twice in the past ten weeks. I am aware anecdotally that the waiting lists in question could be well in excess of five years.

Separately, I asked the HSE for a composite response on those waiting lists. Instead of asking each specific regional health area, I just asked one question. With several of those attempts, the primary care access and integration office in the HSE has declined to offer a more refined breakdown than +52 weeks, even though I know it can just refer that on to local managers who will provide that information. It is very frustrating. It is almost like being put into an Orwellian loop with regard to trying to access reasonable information.

I want to come back to Mr. Gloster on the recruitment needs of primary care services. I am pleased to hear about recruitment to CDNTs being expedited but when we talk about staffing levels in disability services, we have to also include primary care within that. As I outlined at the start, primary care services are deep in crisis and this is not well recognised. Will Mr. Gloster tell me if there is a particular commitment in terms of staffing numbers? Are we going to see a comprehensive recruitment drive to primary care specifically? Is it, as some of my former colleagues fear, going to be a case of robbing Peter to pay Paul when it comes to the redeployment of clinicians from CAMHS into primary care or from CDNTs into primary care?