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

I note at the outset that it is very sad that there are so many people, so many children, on waiting lists for healthcare and therapies. It is not good enough. I know that and I feel it very much in my constituency work with the parents and children I meet from time to time who tell me of their personal stories.

It is only right, however, that we in this House acknowledge that waiting lists for healthcare are now falling. The NTPF figures show that the waiting lists for outpatient appointments - that is, for people waiting to see a specialist - have been falling consistently for three or four months in a row. It took years and years of investment and additional staff but we are now finally seeing those outpatient waiting lists falling. When I became Taoiseach two and a half years ago, more than 60,000 people had been waiting for more than 12 weeks for an operation or procedure. That figure is now down to approximately 38,000, or over a third in two and a half years. Much of this is down to the investment through the National Treatment Purchase Fund, NTPF, of which I know Deputy Martin was very supportive and which he advocated. We also see that the waiting times for general paediatrics are down approximately 30% so far this year. This is because of the new urgent care centre that has been opened in Connolly Hospital. The centre has a dedicated paediatric outpatient department. That is a big turnaround in one year. We also see that in child and adolescent mental health services, CAMHS, for example, the waiting list is down approximately 20% in the past year. This is not down to any waiting list initiative but to structural changes that have been led by the Minister of State, Deputy Daly, in employing a large number of assistant psychologists, moving away from a psychiatric model to a model based more on psychology. That is real progress as outpatient lists now have been falling for three or four months in a row; inpatient procedural lists are down by approximately one third from where they were two and a half years ago. Waiting times for general paediatrics - I know it is only general paediatrics, but that is an important part of paediatrics - is down 30% in the past year; and CAMHS waiting lists are down 20% over the past year. It took years and years of investment and additional staff to reverse the damage that was done, but I am glad I can now say and stand over the fact that waiting lists are falling, not increasing, after a very long time during which they went in the wrong direction.

We will continue to invest. There is an additional €1 billion in the budget for the HSE next year. The Connolly centre has opened and is helping already. We need to open that over weekends and in the evenings as well, which we are working to do in 2020. The urgent care centre in Tallaght for children will open next year, which is a big step forward as well. The main new children's hospital, on the St. James's Hospital campus, with an individual room for every child and space for a parent to sleep in every room, will open in 2023. After so many false starts, including €35 million wasted on the Mater Hospital project, we finally have that hospital at roof level. The windows are already in on one level. We are working on moving speech and language therapy into schools, which I think will work out, but that has only started. We will see how that pilot plays out.

To answer the Deputy's question, there is not a moratorium on recruitment. We have 15,000 more staff in our health service than we had a few years ago. We have more staff in our health service than we had this time last year. Managers can fill positions as long as those positions are budgeted for.

We are working on consultant pay. We are willing to make an offer to doctors with regard to consultant pay - we will give full pay equality for consultants, provided consultants commit to working in the public service and the public service only.

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