James Reilly (Dublin North, Fine Gael)

It may be all well in the Minister's mind to say that we will only talk about those waiting more than three months, but the reality is that there are 46,000 people waiting for treatment. The NTPF figures are extremely misleading because they do not include those people waiting up to three months. Many people are now finding that they are not getting onto the NTPF waiting list until they have been waiting six months.

How many people are believed to be on outpatient waiting lists? Does the Minister have any system to measure the number of patients and the length of time from the day a patient is referred from primary care to a hospital? Following our discussion on what happened at Tallaght, surely this is an issue of serious concern.

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