Marc MacSharry (Sligo-Leitrim, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State to the House and I am glad to have the opportunity to make a few brief points. I thank my colleagues for using Private Members' time to debate this motion.

The Minister of State gave a good account of everything that might happen and could happen, what is well under way, what is being investigated and referred to trial models and so on. In the meantime, there are ridiculous waiting lists. I am from the same part of the country as the Leas-Cheann Comhairle and many others in the House, a region comprising 280,000 or more people, which includes Sligo Regional Hospital and Letterkenny University Hospital.

There are two neurologists based in Sligo who cover both hospitals. They are Dr. Daniel Kevin Murphy and another recently appointed neurologist. The Saolta hospital group has made the case that based on the population being seen five consultant neurologists are required in the area. That equates to one per 70,000 patients. I have focused specifically on Sligo Regional Hospital, but the position in Letterkenny University Hospital and other hospitals throughout the country is the same. We can consider the figures for outpatients alone from 28 January 2016. At that stage 338 people were waiting. In a reasonably positive development at the time, only seven had been waiting for over 15 months. The Minister of State and his colleagues have spoken about the progress being made, but there were different figures on 31 October this year, or one month ago.

I will wait to receive the Minister of State's attention. I am glad that the staff of the Debates Office have managed to get a copy of his speech. They might show the courtesy of waiting and asking for scripts after the fact.

On 31 October the figure of 338 people waiting to see a neurologist had become 710, an increase of 110% increase. There is a cost for other health services, support services and charities on which we depend to care for the people concerned as a result of not having an adequate diagnosis early enough and treatments prescribed by neurologists. This cost could be saved by providing the number of neurologists required. The two mentioned are working like slaves and can absolutely not do any more. There was an increase of 110% in the number waiting for an outpatients' neurologist appointment. The Department has provided figures for those waiting more than 15 months. Of the 710 people waiting, 316 have been waiting for more than 15 months, which represents an increase of 4,514% in one year in the number waiting for more than 15 months for an appointment. These figures are from the National Treatment Purchase Fund. There is no metric, analysis, speech that can be written or trial model that could be under way to justify such incompetence and mediocrity.

In Sligo I was involved in a small way in the establishment of the North West Neurological Institute, a charity that does some of the work for the Health Service Executive. Remarkably, the clinical indemnity scheme will not admit it because Mr. Ciarán Breen has stated it is a political matter. The Government should work as hard and as quickly as it can to recruit the five neurologists we require in the region, but will it, please, help the charities which are doing some of the work and admit them into the clinical indemnity scheme?

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