Carol Nolan (Laois-Offaly, Independent) | Oireachtas source

It is shameful that, as the motion notes, "hospital waiting lists now stand at 888,000 patients, with more than 500,000 people waiting longer than the Sláintecare targets ... and with more than 225,000 people waiting for a diagnostic scan". From a reply to a parliamentary question that I received on this matter, I know that the Department of Health is working with the HSE and the NTPF to identify ways to improve access to care. Clearly, however, this is not happening at sufficient scale. We need to see: an urgent ramping up and increased use of private hospitals; the funding of weekend and evening work in public hospitals; funding for see-and-treat services; the provision of virtual clinics; and an increase in capacity in the public hospital system.

The 2022 waiting list action plan under which €350 million was allocated to the HSE and the NTPF to reduce waiting lists is just not working. Under this plan we were supposed to see the delivery of urgent additional capacity for the treatment of patients as well as investment in long-term reforms to bring sustained reductions in waiting lists. Again, the evidence would suggest that we are heading in completely the wrong direction. This is to say nothing of the crisis in our dental services, access to GPs in rural areas and the massive number of staff vacancies in our children's disability network teams, including its highest national level of 43% in CHO 8, my local CHO. This means that almost half of the children's disability staff positions are unfilled. I am informed by the HSE that while the largest discipline within the children's disability network teams is speech and language therapy, a staggering 162 whole-time positions out of a total of 447 are vacant. When all of these figures are combined, they show that, unfortunately, the health crisis shows no sign of improving.

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