Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State and welcome that a plan is in place and there is innovative thinking within it. I would like the plan to provide for monthly published data so that we could see how the numbers are going and how cases are being reviewed and prioritised, particularly those of the 284,000 who have been waiting over 12 months, to ensure people with urgent needs are not being overlooked. It should also involve GPs. The oversight team must also have the capacity to step in and intervene. It is all very well to record the data but there has to be capacity to intervene and manage this process in a way that is in the interests of public health.

We have, to some degree, become used to people telling us how we must manage in this pandemic but if we want to avoid backlogs getting out of control, similar powers must be provided to managers to step in and require things to be done in individual hospitals.

I am gratified to see that in my area, Beaumont Hospital is one of the few hospitals where both outpatient and inpatient waiting numbers have declined. That is a sign of good management of a process and needs to be done at scale. In addition to publishing a plan that shows how to do this safely and well, we must also monitor how effective the innovation is and the extent to which remote diagnosis is being used in an innovative way, the extent to which GPs are being given the opportunity to participate in the prioritisation of cases that are drawn on the basis of need, and how the NTPF responds to these need assessments as simply using its procedures to determine that action is needed on an individual case because it has been ongoing for nine months. This has to be managed in an active process to avoid the deterioration of a situation that is a risk factor for the health service and citizens.

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