Liam Twomey (Wexford, Fine Gael)

They are counting everything. I love the comment about the National Treatment Purchase Fund sanitising the waiting lists to make them acceptable to the Government when it runs in the next general election. The Minister must be realistic. The most important thing to patients is the length of time they must wait from the time the general practitioner writes a letter of referral for them to when they are seen by the consultant. It does not matter whether it is an appointment for an ear, nose and throat specialist, orthopaedics, rheumatology, ophthalmology, neurology or neurosurgical outpatients follow-up. Patients are waiting anything from three to six years for those outpatient appointments. That is the measure of a health service. As the Tánaiste made clear in one of her great speeches to the PD constituents, it is not about facts and figures; it is about a person's experience of the health services and these are not good experiences——

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