Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I can provide the Deputy with information to the end of quarter 3. Unfortunately, Fórsa workers are refusing to provide information to the HSE, the Department and Parliament. This does not fall within a work-to-rule action, and I have clear advice on that. Nonetheless, that is what they are doing and we have to deal with it.

I acknowledge the distress this has caused to patients and families. I have been in the position, as have many others, I am sure, where a family member or friend has been waiting for a procedure, be it a minor procedure or a major operation. There is a lot involved in that. People look forward to it and they can be nervous. They may be admitted the night beforehand and may go through full preparation only to be told the theatre is not available because there has been a road traffic accident. They may be told a high-dependency bed is not available for them after the procedure, typically because something has happened in the accident and emergency department. That can cause a lot of distress.

As regards the figures the Deputy asked for, at the end of quarter 3 last year, there had been 30,833 cancellations. It is important to contextualise that number. It is 2% of the total number of procedures. While it is a large number, it is in the context of about 1.5 million procedures. Critically, when I was looking through the Deputy's question earlier this week, I asked the Department to talk to the HSE about how many of those cancelled procedures were rescheduled. It is one thing for a procedure to be cancelled but it is important that patients get care. The HSE has indicated that in a large majority of those cases, the procedure will have been rescheduled and the patient will have received either the care or a new appointment.

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