Jennifer Carroll MacNeill (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael)

I thank the Deputy. He might allow me to reflect on that and discuss it with my officials further.

What we are trying to do to build capacity in primary care therapy services is this three-part national programme, which I will lay out for the Deputy. Workstream 1 is an analysis of regional productivity to optimise current therapy care to maximise capacity within existing resources. Frankly, there is variation between regions and we need to understand specifically what that variation is and have a national response that prioritises patients who have been waiting over one year for therapy access. We are developing a primary care therapy waiting list management protocol, the purpose of which is to ensure consistency and transparency during referral, waiting list management and discharge across all primary care in the different regions to improve overall patient experience. We have seen this used in other areas to good effect and it is now time this be properly used for primary care therapies.

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