Billy Kelleher (Cork North Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

We welcome any commitment that there will be an improvement, but we would like to see an improvement in how we manage waiting lists. More importantly, we would like to see resources being put in place to streamline the assessment of patients and the lists on which they should be placed. What confounds people is the idea that we are consistently cancelling elective surgery in order to deal with crises in emergency departments. The idea that we put people on a waiting list while knowing that there is a chance that elective surgeries will be cancelled in January is something we need to examine. That policy exerts major stress and pressure on the many people preparing for operations throughout the Christmas period and in January who are then told that the response to the continuous emergency overcrowding in January is the cancellation of elective surgery. This has caused great distress for many, as the Minister knows from his other profession. People have major concerns when they are waiting for operations and procedures and that they are being cancelled as an emergency response is not good enough.

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