Just the facts, Ma'am, just the Facts. Lies and the Irish Health Service

We are told that people are on waiting within an average of 2-5 months. Now you'd have to admit that is a pretty broad average even by the standards we tend to see in the health sector. A real average would be something like 3 months 17 days and not something that is more than 150% the size of the shortest time period involved.

We are also told that reducing staff numbers will have no impact on patient care, yet we are contrastingly regularly informed that increasing staff numbers is only undertaken if it will result in an improvement in patient care.

We are also told that of the 40,000 on waiting lists that 12,000 are waiting over 6 months.

We are told that 6,000 fail to turn up for their procedures and that this is entirely their own fault. Now, I've had personal experience of this circumstance of not being able to make an appointment as my father who is in his 70s was consistently only informed late on the day before that he was to be in Cork city at a hospital early the following morning for a procedure that he has to under go on a regular but not too frequent basis. Traveling to Cork for this procedure means a journey that he has to undertake by public transport, and public transport is something he can't access at a sufficiently early hour to be in Cork for 10am. Cork can't provide him with a bed overnight prior to the procedure and yet keeps scheduling the procedure for early in the morning. There is no political ideology at work here between public and private it is down to competence and work practices. It has been repeatedly pointed out to the people Why not schedule appointments for those closest to the hospital early in the day and those from further away for later on allowing them to travel there any back? It has been repeatedly raised with the folks on the front line who have we believe passed it on to the administration people yet it never seems to affect his appointment times.