Outpatient waiting list figures ‘equal to Connacht population’
ALMOST 550,000 people across the country are on outpatient waiting lists – the equivalent of the population of Connacht, new figures show.
Fianna Fáil spokesman on health Stephen Donnelly has described the numbers as ‘astonishingly bad’.
‘These figures make for grim reading, as they set another new record – the number of people on the outpatient waiting list jumped by over 18,000 in a month,’ the TD said.
‘It’s important though to put these numbers into perspective so we get the real picture. There are now 541,899 people waiting for an appointment with a consultant. That’s almost equal to the population of Connacht at around 550,000.’
Mr Donnelly added that ‘164,644 of these are waiting over a year, and within that 99,433 have been waiting since summer 2017 at least’.
He continued: ‘If you want to see the scale of that, take a look at the Aviva Stadium... we would need three Aviva Stadiums to fit in all those waiting over a year. This is clearly a crisis yet we see no initiative from [Health] Minister [Simon] Harris. We are still waiting for an action plan on waiting lists for this year.
‘The promised plan for outpatients in 2018 never materialised. There is no sense of urgency.
‘When the numbers waiting for an appointment are set to surpass the population of a province, surely it’s time for the Minister to take action.’
The Department of Health had not responded to a request for comment at the time of going to print.