Health Services Waiting Lists
Dail Éireann — 2026-07-09
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Jennifer Carroll MacNeill (FG), Dún Laoghaire

We are trying to end the practice of the money moving from community to acute care and make sure that this does not happen. I will name some additional waiting list initiatives that are important. In budget 2025, we had base funding of €8 million for community-based waiting lists, particularly for psychology and audiology which had previously only received once-off funding. That is more embedded now. I totally agree with the Deputy in relation to the number of people waiting. We will have a dedicated programme over two years to address orthodontic waiting lists. We are just not quite there yet in terms of the negotiations with the Irish Dental Association. Nevertheless, €20 million has been invested in that initiative, resulting in more than 5,500 removals from waiting lists. The Deputy and I are not in any sort of disagreement here. We need to invest more in the community. We need these services to be available in the community. That also means applying the outpatient toolkit, once we are finished with the acute hospitals, to the community lists and the management and scheduling of those. It also means extended hours for all of those therapeutic services in primary care centres, as much as it will mean in the acute. The Deputy can understand why we focus on the acute services first. Nevertheless, that is where we need to get to.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-07-09/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-09-14T01:01:07+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-07-09