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

At the start of 2015, the Minister abandoned his predecessor's targets of a maximum waiting time of 18 months for inpatient day case appointments and one year for outpatient appointments. There is no point in pretending in this Chamber that circumstances have improved. The Minister has moved the goalposts and has set diminishing expectations. Charles Dickens' novel Great Expectationscomes to mind. If it were about the Minister's tenure, it would be called Diminishing Expectations. Creating diminishing expectations is what the Minister has been doing consistently. Every target set by his predecessor has been moved to make it look better but the bottom line is that people are still waiting for inordinate periods. For the Minister to applaud himself for moving the goalposts and deeming it acceptable for people to have to wait 15 months or 18 months for various appointments is simply not credible any more. The statistics show that 64,985 people are waiting for more than a year for an appointment and that 4,476 of these are for the National Children's Hospital. Behind the Minister's statistics are individuals who are waiting for inordinate periods. While the Minister is saying the statistics do not include emergency appointments, he should realise each case is an emergency for the individual concerned. The patients would at least like a timely appointment with the consultant in terms of diagnostics.

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