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

We had been making significant progress on waiting lists prior to the pandemic.

1 o’clock

For many months, if not for more than a year, we were seeing reductions in the number of people waiting for an operation or a procedure and reductions in the number of people waiting to attend an outpatient clinic. It was still a bad situation but we had been going in the right direction and then came Covid-19, which changed everything. It meant that much normal healthcare had be suspended to prioritise Covid-19 care or because it was not safe. We need to get all that back on track again now, but it will not be easy and it will take time.

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