Hospital Waiting Lists
Dail Éireann — 2026-02-24
============================================================

John Paul O'Shea (FG), Cork North-West

I thank the Minister of State for her encouragement and engagement in the response. There is a glimmer of hope for orthopaedic patients in Cork. I know we had the fantastic publication of the service plan this week, where the Minister, Deputy Carroll MacNeill, announced €34 million for the surgical hub, which will allow capacity for up to 18,500 outpatient appointments. I hope that will reduce some of the orthopaedic waiting list for outpatient clinics. As the Minister of State said, it is currently at 7,444. I am glad this figure was brought before the House tonight because it outlines clearly that there is a big challenge in Cork to address the orthopaedic waiting lists.
I want to mention two people who have come to my office. I have received correspondence on them from the South Infirmary and the HSE. One person, a lady in her 80s, was referred for an urgent outpatient appointment, but she cannot even get an indicative date. A lady in her 60s has been to the GP twice to get a more urgent referral to the outpatient clinic. In both cases, the management of the hospital and the HSE still cannot guarantee appointments for my two constituents. I am doing my very best to represent them but, unfortunately, I cannot get an appointment time.
There is some glimmer of hope with regard to outsourcing theatre capacity in Cork to private hospitals over the coming months to cater for the long waiting lists while we wait for the surgical hub to open in CUH in quarter 3. I would encourage the Minister of State to engage with the HSE and ask it to facilitate some private capacity in private hospitals to deal with the emergent outpatient waiting list. It is chronic. To have 7,444 people waiting in Cork for a basic outpatient appointment for orthopaedics is unacceptable and must be dealt with as soon as possible.

---

Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted.

Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-02-24/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:40+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-02-24