Charlie McConalogue (Donegal North East, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy Kelleher for tabling this motion on the inadequacy of the HSE service plan for 2015, which was published in the past week.

I will comment, first, on the HIQA review of the ambulance service and emphasise the importance of investing to increase the number of ambulances in different parts of the country. The report indicates difficulties in co-ordination between hospitals and the ambulance service which must be addressed. There is a definite need for investment in the service, particularly outside Dublin where there are large areas to be covered. In the absence of ambulances and staff working in these areas, waiting and response times are impacted on. In that regard, I refer to the death last year of Maura Porter on New Year's Eve and the experience of her family who are but one of many other families who have been impacted on by the lack of co-ordination, on the one hand, and the need for additional investment, on the other.

With regard to the service plan, I will focus on its impact on County Donegal and Letterkenny General Hospital, in particular. The experience in Letterkenny is replicated across the country. There are over 2,400 people on the waiting list who are waiting for more than one year for an outpatient appointment with a consultant at Letterkenny General Hospital. That number has increased by 1,500 in the past six months. There are also 3,000 people on the surgery waiting list. These are the official hospital figures which I received in response to parliamentary questions to the Minister. It is unacceptable and not the type of service which people in County Donegal or elsewhere in the country should expect from the health service.

I focus, in particular, on people who have been affected by the outpatient waiting list initiative which the HSE and the Department of Health brought forward this time last year. In the case of Letterkenny, 2,700 patients were outsourced from Letterkenny General Hospital to private hospitals to be seen by a consultant. These are separate from the numbers I quoted for hospital waiting lists. Of this number, approximately half were either treated or discharged back to their general practitioner. However, 1,300 have been left in limbo since last year, with no follow-up treatment. Over one year after being outsourced by the HSE to a private consultant or private hospital, 1,300 people across the county have not had either follow-up tests with these consultants or the surgery it has been indicated or reported to the hospital that they require. There is no funding set aside in the HSE service plan to address this issue.

I hope the Minister will deal specifically with the patients who were covered by the waiting list initiative last year and what will happen to them. It has been indicated to me that there is a likelihood these patients will have to return to the hospital waiting list and will not receive the follow-up treatment they require from the consultant to whom they were initially referred. That means the outsourcing and visits to these consultants will have been a waste of money in many cases because the patients will have to be seen by the internal hospital consultants again before appropriate follow-up treatment can be arranged. It is totally unacceptable that the Government is prioritising funding towards what it regards as election winning measures through decreases in the higher rate of tax, while not addressing this very serious issue or allocating funding to ensure patients can be treated. I ask the Minister to address this issue or that he revert to me with specific proposals for how the needs of these patients will be addressed. In just one county over 1,300 patients are in limbo for over one year with no indication of how they will have the tests or operations they require. It is unacceptable and the issue must be addressed immediately. They cannot be left to continue without any follow-up treatment, which is the current position.

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