Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

-----on a hip, an eye or a cataract or for a knee replacement was at a four-year or five-year low. It went up in January as a consequence of the time lost around the nurses' strike and it will go up in February too for the same reason. In March, it will once again be on a downward trajectory. That means that most public patients waiting for an operation or procedure in Ireland now wait between three and six months, which is a significant improvement on where we were not too long ago. We are not making much progress on outpatients and we need a new approach there. Approximately, 300,000 people have been waiting for more than 12 weeks. I refer to the period of 12 weeks because that is the Sláintecare target. The headline figures on waiting lists often include people who have been waiting for one, two or six weeks. There will always be people waiting one, two or six weeks, but the Sláintecare figure refers to those waiting for more than 12 weeks and that is the figure I always look out for. There are now roughly 300,000 people who have been waiting for more than 12 weeks to see a specialist, but 500,000 appointments are no-shows.

There is a real problem there in terms of planning and efficiency that we have not got on top of. There are potential solutions but many of them are IT-based and other things need to be done too.

The implementation of Sláintecare is run out of the Sláintecare implementation office, which is in the Department of Health, but I will put some officials on that. In the same way as I have officials designated to monitor the implementation of the Garda reform package and the justice reform package, I will assign officials to do the same with Sláintecare.

On the question of VAT on supplements, I answered questions on that earlier during Questions on Promised Legislation so I will not repeat myself-----

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