The Government is almost certain to miss its own targets set out in the National Health Strategy for reducing hospital waiting lists this year, according to Department of Health figures released yesterday.
The Minister for Health, Mr Martin, last night insisted he was still committed to the targets, saying that the National Treatment Purchase Fund, which began operating in July, would have a substantial impact.
However, Fine Gael and Labour said the latest figures showed the waiting list objectives set out in the Health Strategy could not be met.
In total, 24,850 people were awaiting hospital treatment at the end of June 2002, compared to 26,659 12 months previously.
But while the Health Strategy pledged to eliminate the numbers waiting for longer than 12 months by the end of this year, some 7,890 adults were still in this category at the end of June 2002.
This represents a drop of 2,270 or 22 per cent over a 12-month period, a rate of decrease not fast enough to meet the target.
In addition, the Health Strategy committed the Government to ensuring that by the end of 2002 no child was waiting longer than six months for treatment.
However in the target specialities the number of children waiting over six months has remained virtually unchanged at 1,967 - over two thirds of the total number of children.
Mr Martin said yesterday he was confident that the funding provided for the Waiting List Initiative and the National Treatment Purchase Fund would lead to further reductions in the numbers waiting for long periods.
"The National Treatment Purchase Fund is continuing to increase its caseload and expects to have treated close on 1,900 patients by the end of this year," he said.
However, the winter vomiting bug, which resulted in significant numbers of hospital beds being occupied by emergency cases rather than people waiting for treatment, will make it even harder to get the numbers down quickly enough to meet the targets set out in the strategy.
Labour's health spokeswoman, Ms Liz McManus, said there had been only a 1 per cent fall from March to June this year, making "a complete mockery" of the targets.
Fine Gael's spokeswoman, Ms Olivia Mitchell, said that after five and a half years in office and a doubling of health spending, it was "a sorry claim" that almost 25,000 people were still awaiting treatment.
The largest waiting lists are for orthopaedics (3,916), ear, nose and throat (3,563), general surgery (3,252), ophthalmology (3,243).
Substantial progress has been made in reducing the waiting list for cardiac surgery from 420 in June 2001 to 273 in June 2002.
However, some 93 of this year's figure had been waiting for over 12 months for heart bypass surgery.