Ruth Coppinger (Dublin West, Socialist Party)
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12. To ask the Minister for Health his views on waiting lists for outpatients and inpatients to see specialists, and the performance of accident and emergency departments in the past five years. [42982/15]

Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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Improving access for patients is a key performance objective for our health services. In January, taking into account current pressures on acute hospital services, I put in place maximum permissible waiting times for in-patient and day case treatment and outpatient appointments of 18 months by 30 June and 15 months by year end.

The HSE was provided with additional funding of €51 million to ensure that these maximum waiting times would be achieved. In June, the HSE reported a performance against the 18 month maxima of 99.6% for in-patient/day cases and 92% for outpatients. The latest National Treatment Purchase Fund figures, published on Friday 6 November, continue to show improvements. There are reductions in the total in-patient /day case waiting list, and in the numbers of patients waiting between 15 – 18 months and waiting over 18 months. Outpatient improvements are also evident, with a reduction of almost 5,000 in the overall outpatient waiting lists and of over 3,000 in the number of people waiting between 15 – 18 months for appointments.

We are making progress in relation to emergency care and this is borne out by a reduction of 15%, or over 12,000 people on trolleys since 2011. We are starting to see results from the implementation of the Emergency Task Force Plan and the investment of a further €117 million provided to support the performance of the acute hospital system.

As mentioned previously, HSE figures are showing a 8% reduction in overcrowding this November compared to last. The INMO figures are also showing significant improvement in the second half of November. This contrasts with the position back in August when overcrowding was 40% up compared to August last year. Recent progress is definitely in the right direction and a big improvement on the start of the year when there were 500 to 600 people on trolleys. This Wednesday morning's TrolleyGar report showed 303 patients waiting on trolleys at 8am, with 117 of those patients waiting over 9 hours. The comparable figures for the same day last year were 409 patients on trolleys with 204 waiting over 9 hours, a drop of 26%.

There is much more to do before we will have achieved timely access for patients to emergency and elective care but we are moving in the right direction.