Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for raising this important matter. I understand from data provided by the National Treatment Purchase Fund, NTPF, that at the end of June 2016 some 3,859 patients were waiting for gynaecology outpatient appointments and 458 were waiting for inpatient or day case gynaecology procedures at Cork University Hospital. While these figures represent a welcome reduction on figures at the end of June 2015, there is a need to address the issue of waiting lists in a much more focused manner.

The Deputy will appreciate that ensuring timely access to health services is a key challenge and concerted efforts are and will continue to be made to improve the current situation. My Department is engaging with the HSE in regard to the development of an action plan for each hospital in order to address waiting times. Individual hospitals will be required to develop process improvement plans which will focus on improving chronological scheduling, validating waiting lists and ensuring that existing capacity is optimised and maximised, although I am not sure it always is, to be frank. The action plan will be implemented over the remainder of 2016. Within the HSE, a scheduled care governance group has been established to co-ordinate key initiatives in order to reduce waiting times and the number of patients awaiting treatment.

Given it is an issue his party feels strongly about, I draw the attention of the Deputy to A Programme for a Partnership Government, which commits to a minimum of €15 million in funding for the NTPF in 2017 to address waiting lists for those waiting longest, as part of a continued investment of a minimum of €50 million per year to reduce waiting times. My Department is currently engaging with the NTPF and the HSE to deliver on the programme's waiting list commitments. In fact, I met with the CEO and chairman of the NTPF in the last two to three weeks to put them on notice that they are very much being reactivated. I told them they should expect to receive a minimum of €15 million in budget 2017 in order to get on and do what they were doing - a very good job of in terms of clearing waiting lists - and I asked their views in addition to the views of the HSE and the Department of Health in regard to how best to maximise the €50 million that will become available for waiting list initiatives. I will look into the specific issues raised by the Deputy.

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