Mary Butler (Waterford, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I am really glad the Deputy has given me the opportunity to talk about the primary care psychology list, because when I came into post last year I inherited the highest ever waiting lists in that area. I spoke at length with the Minister to see how we could deal with this. In the short term what I have put in place is as follows. For September, October, November and December of this year, €4 million was allocated to the nine CHOs. I asked them to come to me with a proposal. Would they do overtime on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday nights? Would they hire a locum on a Saturday? Would they go for private capacity? Would they try to put in a surge in public capacity to try to deal with this? I am glad to see the numbers are coming down and I will have a report at the end of October, which is midway through. We also need to put a permanent process in place and we will deal with that through working with the Minister. There will be many staff recruited within the budget process. We are also looking at a waiting list initiative. We want to clear this waiting list and we know each child might need, four, six, eight or ten appointments. It is not just about one appointment. We are working towards it.

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