The Department of Health has rejected claims that hospital waiting list figures have been "massaged".
Responding to reports that detailed hospital breakdowns differ greatly from figures released by the Department of Health earlier this month, a spokeswoman for the Department said this "was not the case".
A report yesterday claimed there were close to 28,000 people on the official Department of Health waiting lists on the basis of detailed hospital breakdowns.
Earlier this month, the Department of Health said there were 19,500 people on waiting lists.
Some 7,500 patients were removed from waiting lists following a National Treatment Purchase Fund (NTPF) validation which involved the removal of people who did not need surgery, were not available for treatment, not medically suitable for treatment, no longer required it or wanted to postpone it.
The Department of Health, however, has rejected the claims of massaging figures. The spokeswoman said a multi-disciplinary team from the National Treatment Purchase Fund has been working with individual hospitals to identify patients on waiting lists. The figure of 19,500 has been verified by the NTPF.
"Waiting times have fallen significantly in the last year. Some 80 per cent of patients now wait less than one year. In January 2003, 39 per cent of patients had to wait over 12 months, compared to 20 per cent in January 2004. We are continuing to work to bring this down."
Meanwhile, Fine Gael's health spokeswoman Ms Olivia Mitchell said waiting lists have become meaningless, and it was no longer possible to get an accurate idea of the numbers waiting for surgery.
"If the Health Minister devoted as much of his energy to the real task of ending waiting lists as he does to massaging the figures for presentation to the public then we might actually begin to see some change. As it stands the Government is further away than ever from actually fulfilling its promise to end waiting lists."