Jennifer Carroll MacNeill (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael)

It is an excellent question. It is exactly what I have asked Bernard Gloster to do. Of course, I have to wait for the report to be able to express my confidence in the quality of the work that has come back. The Deputy may take that as a reference example. As I said my opening reply, if there was underutilised capacity, that is, as the report states, other people in the hospital could have held surgeries at an earlier period but did not due to the waiting list management process, that is very serious.

In advance of receiving the insourcing report, we have mandated a centralised referral mechanism so that if someone is referred to surgery, they are not referred to Jennifer, Sorca or whoever. Rather, patients are referred to the system and will then be allocated an appointment according to capacity rather than an individual consultant having the capacity to manage their lists or patients in a way that is unhelpful.

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