Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions
Dail Éireann — 2021-10-14
============================================================

Leo Varadkar (FG), Dublin West

The four-month target was set by the director general of the HSE at the time, but it does remain the target: four months to outpatients and then four months to surgery. I do not know exactly what the situation is with regard to theatre time or theatre staff, but I will find out and I will get a reply for the Deputy as soon as I can.
Regarding the waiting lists, Children's Health Ireland advises us that as of the end of August, 118 patients were awaiting spinal fusion, a decrease of eight patients compared with the previous year, and 78 were awaiting other procedures, a decrease of nine on the previous year. It has advised that, due to the cyberattack these data are provisional and subject to validation.

---

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/2021-10-14/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:49:42+00:00
Sitting date: 2021-10-14