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waiting for years on end for basic care. Community waiting lists have increased, as have mental health waiting lists. Acute hospital waiting lists have remained static. The national children's hospital has still not been built. All there is in the programme for Government on the national children … sense of detail, timescale, urgency or recognition of all of the challenges. It just states "Open the National Children’s Hospital". There is a long list of measures which I found laughable as somebody who takes my responsibility as health spokesperson very seriously. I set out in detail

briefly about a hospital in my constituency of Carlow-Kilkenny, St. Luke's Hospital. Will there be urgent investment in the hospital to improve waiting lists, bed accommodation numbers, accident and emergency overcrowding and waiting times at the hospital? They have escalated significantly recently. Additionally, we now have

vague with no costings or timelines. It means the continuation of the housing and homelessness crisis, the cost-of-living crisis, hospital overcrowding, long health waiting lists, a broken disability service and the continuation of the health recruitment embargo, the so-called pay and numbers strategy. Everybody agrees … been reneged on. The section on disability services is weak, vague and non-specific. There is no proposal to eliminate the long waiting lists for therapy services. Indeed, the programme foresees the continuation of the long backlogs. It continues to decide to deprive children with additional needs

must focus our emphasis. Our tests and assessments must be based on waiting times, which are coming down but which need to come down further. Our Sláintecare targets are ten and 12 weeks. The Waiting List Action Plan 2025, which I published earlier this month, is another milestone … waiting relates to access to urgent and emergency care and, in particular, that most visible element of it, the trolley count we see, with people unacceptably waiting on trolleys to get access to our healthcare services. The number of patients waiting on trolleys in hospitals

financial benefit and provides savings to the State as well vis-à-vis the cost of nursing homes and hospitals. There are about 5,000 people on waiting lists for home care supports. The provision of home care is, unfortunately, a postcode lottery. There is a significant division

today at the hospital only to find out that not only her surgery but that of many others was cancelled because of other problems in the hospital. This is causing her great stress. Her daughter is due for treatment in the hospital next week … that is the best way to actually reduce waiting lists, particularly those in the elective space which are the big problem. I refer to orthopaedics and many other areas. The Minister also spoke about the new national children's hospital. It is interesting that we hear a great

time high of almost 14,000. Waiting lists are similarly as high, and outpatient numbers are well in excess of half a million. We have reviews and investigations into hospitals like University Hospital Limerick, Portiuncula hospital and Mayo general hospital. The Government and health service management thew … thrown into an already fraught situation and has the potential to cause serious harm, not only to staff but also to patients already waiting far too long for treatments. The Fórsa trade union, representing its members, responded predictably and reasonably when it said that if this instruction

that St. James's is Ireland's largest acute public teaching hospital treating hundreds of thousands of patients annually across multiple specialties? Capacity pressures are evident in overcrowded emergency departments with bed shortages and waiting lists which require expanded infrastructure urgently

seeking an update on the waiting list action plan. We have a strategy in place. I raise this matter in light of the crisis situation at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda. The emergency department is continuously in surge capacity and appointments are constantly being cancelled

there are waiting lists of nearly 1 million people for treatment, and why, for example, we do not have enough public health nurses now to do important developmental checks on young infants. This is all because the Government is preventing health areas and hospitals from being able

across our hospitals and across our communities, and how we can then replicate that, but doing so with our healthcare professionals and with our workers. As a Government, we will continue to invest in our healthcare system and we will continue to ensure our waiting lists are reducing

thank the Deputy for her question. I will be bringing the second iteration of the waiting list action plan to Cabinet this week. The first iteration brought waiting times down from an average of 13 months to seven. We have further to go in order to reach … Sláintecare targets. As I said to Deputy Bacik, there are two issues here. One is about moving people out of the general hospital system to surgical hubs, the first of which will open this week, and dealing with waiting times. The other relates to weekends. In the context

appreciate all of that. One of the largest concerns that parents raised with me, as acknowledged by the Minister of State, is the waiting list to access CAMHS. Parents can quite easily recognise an eating disorder but trying to access support for it is increasingly frustrating. I have … situation themselves. It is very challenging and frustrating for them. I welcome the Minister of State's efforts to try to reduce those waiting lists in order to get parents and their children the supports they urgently need. The other key concern those parents have is what happens

friends or a member of our family who has been deemed to be in need of a hospital bed but no bed is available to them. The programme contains a list of measures previously promised and not delivered. It is a document absent of vision and crucially lacks … closure of Ennis, St. John's and Nenagh hospitals; end the HSE recruitment embargo; bolster out-of-hours GP care and deliver a Pharmacy First minor ailments scheme; and legislate to mandate safe staffing levels in every hospital while engaging directly with workers. On housing, the programme

homelessness but they are struggling because of this Government's failed policies. Emergency accommodation in Galway is full. There is a waiting list. I am dealing with many families who are either couch surfing, living with family or living with friends, and that can be going … trying to get HAP and is in homeless accommodation with two young children, and he needs to be near the hospital for medical purposes. He has to stay beside the hospital. What can he do? He cannot move somewhere extremely far away. Even the HAP place finders find

elderly people. How we treat our elderly people in this country beggars belief. We have people on waiting lists continuously. People are waiting two and a half years to see an eye specialist in Cork city. In my constituency of Cork North-Central, we have the Blackpool SouthDoc … card for OAPs. That is wrong. There is something seriously wrong in the dental system when an OAP cannot get on a dental list or be seen anywhere, that he or she has to travel all the way to Cork city, up to Limerick or possibly to Kerry

across the Central Mental Hospital. I also look forward to the opening of an additional 20 CAMHS beds in the new children's hospital, which will support access to services in this state-of-the-art facility. It is meant to be a beautiful facility … child and youth mental health services will be tangible, measurable and impactful. Improving access to modern mental health services requires that the waiting lists for CAMHS be addressed. In order to continue to meet demand over 2025 and future years, CAMHS teams need to be appropriately staffed

Funding is secured for recruitment of 3,554 additional posts in the HSE for 2025. We will deliver faster access to care. Our waiting list action plan 2025 was published last week with €420 million in funding allocated. We will continue to review capacity in emergency departments … time equivalents since 2020, more affordable health care through reductions in the drugs payment scheme to a threshold of €80, the removal of hospital inpatient charges, the extension of the eligibility for free GP cards for children under the age of eight and to all earning no more

have been on the waiting list for up to eight months. It simply is not good enough. Someone applying for a driving test today in Sligo would wait seven months to get one. Someone applying for one in Leitrim today would wait up to six months … need to recognise that we have an awful lot of work to do. People need their car to get to work or to hospital appointments and to get their children to school. The Government cuts transport in every other way. Every September, Deputies fight in this Chamber

diagnosed. That is six years of appointments and different examinations with consultants and GPs. All that type of stuff contributes to expanding waiting lists because people are on the journey to try to find out what is wrong with them in many cases. If extra resources are devoted … productive members of society, they can continue to work, they will not require care and the number of times they have to attend hospital can be reduced. I would like the Minister to look at that piece in its totality. I know it is in the programme

election campaign, which we talked about before, the question of access to health services, particularly to GPs, was a major factor. There are waiting lists for existing surgeries. The surgeries provide a good service but they cannot take on any more patients. The Minister of State will also … response and thank him for it. He said that even in spite of the delays and cost overruns, the national children’s hospital would be finished quicker than the new primary care centre in Gorey. I agreed with him. This Minister, in fairness to him, intervened directly, such

need to look at carefully. Another major infrastructural challenge is the absence of inpatient beds. The acute mental health facility in University Hospital Galway has 50 beds. The data highlights that the facility is consistently full, leading to my concern that it is difficult to get access … must often await assessment and the availability of interventions and therapies is limited. As was mentioned, 4,500 children are on the existing waiting list for CAMHS. It is likely that many of those patients were referred to CAMHS as a result concerns about ADHD and are seeking

market, it causes problems. Whether that is for students, asylum seekers, people in nursing homes or people on local authority waiting lists, the answer from the Government always seems to be to outsource it again. Its idea is to build more units, not to focus on social … would be 12 years before they would be considered for a house, and another couple is waiting for a house for 16 years. A 67-year-old man who is in hospital with pneumonia is living in or returning to a house that is nearly

which enshrines the right of people with disabilities to live in their community. St. Stephen’s is a fine location for an elective hospital but it is not a suitable place for people to live over a period of years and in some cases for the rest … another layer of management to implement the retrograde pay and numbers strategy by redeploying existing staff will not solve the out-of-control waiting lists in primary care, psychology and CDNTs. It will lead to a plummeting of morale and drive clinicians out of the health service. There

refresh of the model of care for the specialist perinatal mental health network, which has been fully rolled out across all our maternity hospitals, to see how this programme can even better support women with their mental health during the perinatal period. I have also funded additional suicide … children and young people. I also secured an additional €2.9 million this year specifically to support CAMHS to increase core staffing, reduce waiting lists, develop a new CAMHS emergency liaison service and expand CAMHS hubs to improve crisis cover overall. It is important to note that these figures

Deputy Pádraig Rice asked the Minister for Health the number of persons on an acute hospital waiting list, by age category, hospital, speciality and time waiting, in tabular form. [3328/25

Deputy Sorca Clarke asked the Minister for Health the waiting list, per hospital, for gynaecology outpatient appointments, in tabular form. [5240/25

Deputy Matt Carthy asked the Minister for Health the current waiting list for elective surgery appointments at Cavan Monaghan hospital, by procedure type, and the corresponding waiting lists in February of each year from 2020 to 2024, in tabular form; and if she will make a statement

Minister for Health the number of people on the waiting list in the haemoglobin clinic in Naas Hospital from 2021 to 2024; the average waiting time of those on waiting lists; the steps being taken to reduce waiting lists; and if she will make a statement

Deputy Máire Devine asked the Minister for Health the number of paediatric occupational therapists allocated to Cherry Orchard Hospital, Dublin 10 and or its network; the current waiting list size for paediatric occupational therapy at Cherry Orchard Hospital and its network; the average wait time for paediatric occupational

Deputy Pádraig Rice asked the Minister for Health the number of persons on the waiting list to see each consultant ENT surgeon at Cork University Hospital, by wait time. [5188/25

Deputy Pádraig Mac Lochlainn asked the Minister for Health if she is aware of the long waiting lists for dermatology patients in the north west, serviced by Sligo University Hospital and Letterkenny University Hospital; and when the necessary number of consultants and their support teams will be allocated

asked the Minister for Health if urgent investment will be made to improve waiting lists and bed accommodation numbers, availability and accident and emergency overcrowding and waiting times at St. Luke’s Hospital, Kilkenny, by providing for additional medical staff at all levels there; and if she will

persons removed from waiting lists through the outpatient waiting list management protocol in 2022, 2023, and 2024, respectively; the number of those removed that were adults; the number that were children; to provide a further breakdown by hospital, and by type of appointment; and if she will make