Pa Daly (Kerry, Sinn Fein)
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291. To ask the Minister for Health the amount of money paid to private hospitals via the national treatment purchase fund from the outsourcing of waiting list elective in-patient and day-case surgeries at Kerry University Hospital, for the years 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025. [40054/25]

Jennifer Carroll MacNeill (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael)
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It is acknowledged that many patients are still waiting too long for hospital appointments and treatments. I am conscious of the burden this places on patients and their families.

A multi-annual approach through a series of Waiting List Action Plans has been adopted to address this issue. Commencing in late 2021, these plans encompass short-term actions to increase capacity and activity in the short and immediate term, and longer-term reform measures to sustainably reduce both hospital waiting lists and waiting times.

This approach has achieved significant progress in overall waiting list reduction and in addressing long waiting times, against a backdrop of significantly increased demand for scheduled care services.

In relation to expenditure on outsourcing patients from University Hospital Kerry to Private Hospitals, the National Treatment Purchase Fund (NTPF) has advised that, by providing a yearly breakdown of expenditure, the identity of the providers and the nature of the services would be readily apparent, effectively disclosing commercially sensitive pricing information and releasing this information could prejudice the providers’ competitive positions and affect the State’s ability to secure value-for-money services in future procurements. The NTPF has however advised that total payments between 2020 and the end of 2024 for outsourcing for University Hospital Kerry were €13.156m.