Mary Butler (Waterford, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The "RTE Investigates" programme revealed deep suffering among men, women and children as people struggle with daily life while waiting on never-ending waiting lists. Each Deputy in the House, from all parties and none, deals week in and week out with constituents on waiting lists for treatment of hips, knees, eyes and endless other routine operations. The difference a new knee or hip can make to people in their older years is life-changing; when the pain is gone, people can start to live their lives again. Being on a waiting list that seems never-ending is both frustrating and soul destroying and the new revelations that thousands of patients waiting for procedures were not included in the official list by the HSE adds insult to injury.

The latest figures I have for University Hospital Waterford are shocking. Currently, there are more than 6,000 people waiting for orthopaedic procedures involving either knee or hip treatment. These operations are normally extremely successful, as the Minister knows, and they can change a person's life from living with pain to being pain-free again. The list with the next highest number of people concerns ophthalmology, with in excess of 6,000 people also on that list. We know those operations are also very successful and improve greatly an older person's quality of life. We need and deserve a clear and complete picture of the real state of waiting lists. It is easy to look at figures but it is the real-life pain and suffering of patients on which we must focus.

The National Treatment Purchase Fund, NTPF, was sidelined in 2012 by the then health Minister, Senator James Reilly. It was not the solution for everything but while it was in operation between 2002 and 2011, it dramatically reduced waiting lists to between three and six months for the vast majority of people on the list. Contrary to the comments of the Sinn Féin spokesperson on health, Deputy Louise O'Reilly, 33,000 public patients were facilitated in 2010 and from 2002 to 2011, 200,000 public patients were treated. It is a myth that only private patients were treated with that fund.

It has come to my attention in the past couple of months that there are delays in processing nursing registrations, which is exacerbating the crisis in our hospitals. I have been contacted by nurses coming home from England, with one getting a job in University Hospital Waterford's accident and emergency department last December. It is taking up to 90 days for the registration to come through, which makes an existing problem worse. In reply to a parliamentary question I have determined there are still 1,300 people in that system. There are issues with paperwork but if the process could be speeded up, it would bring nurses in much more quickly.

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