John Lahart (Dublin South West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

A Programme for a Partnership Government refers to the Government's efforts to ensure safe, timely care, as close to patients' homes as possible, and undertakes to reduce emergency department overcrowding and address hospital responsiveness to increased demand. As we saw in the programme that aired last night, the Government is struggling to do that. One of the most striking aspects of the report was the remark by a surgeon that if a particular patient is marked as a routine case, he or she will never be seen. Will the Minister give the House an assurance that the Government will use the National Treatment Purchase Fund to address waiting lists in the short to medium term? Will he give specific figures for how much he proposes to invest into the scheme to ease the plight of the people whose stories were so eloquently told on the "RTE Investigates" documentary?

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