Jennifer Carroll MacNeill (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael)

I thank the Deputy and I agree with him on all of these points. Yesterday at the health committee we covered some of the workforce planning issues and the expansion of training places. It is also a workforce management issue and the variation between hospitals is well noted. I am told that in the Mater there have been long-standing recruitment challenges but they have been stabilised. There has been a consistently high volume of urgent referrals with difficulty in accessing radiology in St. James's Hospital. A lean project is under way to improve efficiencies. In Letterkenny the hospital has met the urgent KPI targets for the past three months, although the figure for the year to date is 85% following a poor performance in January. St. Vincent's Hospital has been meeting the urgent KPI since last September and it is at 99%. Cork University Hospital remains in the 80% to 90% range for urgent referrals.

I know the Deputy did not raise this necessarily in the parliamentary question but Galway University Hospital's performance this year has averaged 33% but it is expected to show improvement in May because of the appointment of a replacement breast surgeon. He and I are having to discuss this on a hospital-by-hospital basis and we have to make sure the system is across itself.

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