Fiona O'Loughlin (Kildare South, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The Minister of State, Deputy Catherine Byrne, is very welcome. I appreciate, as always, her courtesy in attending. Time and again, she is the person who has to come to the House to deal with health issues. While I appreciate that she is a Minister of State within the Department of Health, it should be the senior Minister who takes these issues. It is regrettable that he does not.

I raise the matter of the 511,904 people on outpatient waiting lists.

This is the highest number on record, which is a national disgrace. Of that number, 79,647 have been on the waiting list for more than 18 months. Three years ago, the then Minister for Health - the current Taoiseach - stated that by 2018 nobody would wait for more than 18 months for a procedure. Despite this, the waiting lists are at an all-time high.

The cross-border directive was introduced by the European Parliament to better define the rights of EU citizens when seeking treatment in member states other than their own. Under the directive, Irish residents have the right to avail of medical treatment in any other country in the European Economic Area, EEA, and to be treated on the same basis as they would be treated here. Provided certain criteria are met, EEA residents are entitled to request the treatment and receive reimbursement of the cost.

All Deputies are contacted daily or weekly by constituents who are enduring difficulties that impact on their quality of life. Since I became aware of the directive, I have been advising patients on long waiting lists in my constituency of Kildare to avail of it to access care. Cataract removals, tonsillectomies and joint replacements are the treatments I encounter most frequently. One gentleman, who had been unable to work for three years while waiting for a hip operation, recently thanked my office for pointing him in the right direction. The five-star treatment he received abroad changed his life. It is ridiculous that the Health Service Executive cannot have operations performed here but can pay for them to be done abroad. Given the record number of people on waiting lists, should more people not be encouraged to travel abroad to obtain treatments that cannot be provided in the Irish health system?

The cross-border directive is not advertised well enough. While it is advertised on the Internet, every primary care centre and general practice should have information on the directive because many older people who could avail of it are not Internet savvy and will not be aware of it. None of the people I informed about the directive was aware of it previously. Given our scandalous waiting lists, we should point people in the right direction and help them improve their quality of life.

See this speech in context