Mr. Bernard Gloster:

The waiting lists that are measured include outpatient, inpatient, day cases and general GI scoping. The number of people on waiting lists at the start of this year was 670,000. At the end of August, it was 712,000. That is an increase of 41,000. The target to get to by the end of the year is 632,000. The critical point is that 30% of people on that list are now inside the Sláintecare waiting times. That is a very fast turnaround. The number of people who had been on waiting lists for more than 36 months and who were at risk of becoming the type of four-year waiters that I stated I wanted to eradicate when I came into this job stood at 34,200 at the beginning of the year. At the end of August, that figure was down to 14,000. I call that very high productivity and, to use the phrase the Deputy quoted from the Department of public expenditure and reform, "bang for buck". Last year, we focused on those who had been waiting for more than 48 months, a really outrageously long time, and took the majority of them out. At the start of this year, there were 5,300 of those. At the end of August, that figure was down to 4,500.

All the time we are condensing the time. However, the number of people being referred is an example of the fact that people's health is being attended to and of the advances in diagnostics and other treatments that people are receiving. People rightly want access to those treatments. We have to be able to manage the debate and analysis relating to waiting lists. Certainly, we must talk about the number of people involved-----