Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I reiterate the fact that the figure of 400,000 includes people who are waiting for routine appointments for a few weeks. I am focusing on waiting times. When we talk to individual patients they talk about how long they have been waiting, not whether they are placed 1,647 on the list. They want to talk about how long they are waiting. That is why the target should be about waiting times. That is what I am focusing on.

Deputy Kelleher referred to people who are waiting over two years for an outpatient appointment. If I can get my plan through and if it is properly operational by the HSE, then all those people will be called for appointments in the next couple of months. It will be interesting to see how many of them have already had the appointment or have already seen a different consultant. We will see how many of those extremely long waiters recorded in our statistics, for example, those waiting over two years, have really been waiting over two years. That will become evident quite soon.

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