Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail)
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I thank the Chair. I agree with everything he said, particularly when we look at the challenges the Government faced coming into office. As he very fairly stated, many of those challenges still exist. What we have been working on every day is to address them and to do a small number of important things, namely make it quicker for people to access a doctor, a nurse or a therapist, make it affordable for people to be able to do that and make sure that the services people need are available. Important progress has been made, but we are probably halfway through what needs to be done. We have been working on this for a little over four years. The first year and a half were completely dominated by Covid, but as to what our healthcare workers are achieving because they have had this record level of investment, the number of healthcare professionals has increased at a level that has just never happened before, and they have achieved a great deal.

We have a way to go. For example, as stated earlier, in the context of the average length of time someone waits to see a hospital consultant, three years ago it was more than 13 months. It is now just a little over seven months and falling. Our agreed target is no more than three months. To get from 13 months to seven months, on our way to three months, is important, but we are not there yet.

An area we look at an awful lot, quite rightly, is children's spinal services. We focus a great deal on the surgical waiting times, but what very rarely got much mention was the outpatient waiting time. This year, the team in CHI has reduced that so far from five years to 18 months, and it is falling rapidly. We are now well on our way to what we have agreed, which is three months.

Access to GPs in many parts of the country is a big issue. That has not resolved but will begin to resolve from now on in that the simple answer is that we need many more GPs, so we have been increasing the number of GPs in training. It is, however, a several-year training course, obviously. They are beginning to come out now, so now and into the future years it will get a bit easier.

As regards dental services, we are in discussions with the Irish Dental Association. The orthodontic list was one I was particularly concerned about, partly because it was too long and partly because it is too expensive. It is thousands of euro for parents. It is falling and it needs to fall further.

Is Tallaght University Hospital the Chair's local hospital?