Unfortunately, long waits for basic healthcare are now the norm. That should trouble the Taoiseach, especially as a former Minister for health. Waiting lists are no longer a backlog - they are the system. Ireland has become a country of waiting lists, a nation where a health challenge is all too often met with a letter and not with the necessary care. The new figures from the National Treatment Purchase Fund, NTPF, are stark. We know from these that 900,000 people are waiting for outpatient care or an operation. This is a crisis unfolding on the Taoiseach's watch. The Government's Waiting List Action Plan 2025 has patently not worked. The number of people waiting more than six months has increased by 12% in just one year. That is a stunning figure. Nearly one in six adults waiting for outpatient care has languished on a waiting list for more than a year. For children, it is even worse, with more than 17% waiting more than 12 months. It is not just outpatient care either. We learned this week that several children with mental health or developmental difficulties had been left waiting up to, or even in excess of, 11 years for a psychology assessment. As waits get longer, patients get sicker, our emergency departments get more and more crowded and our healthcare staff burn out. We all hear about it every day. Over the weekend, for example, we heard of a stroke victim in her 90s who spent hours on a trolley in the corridor of a Dublin hospital. Her family was unable to contact her or anyone who could reassure them or give an update. That is unacceptable. There is nothing normal about a modern hospital being unable to treat the sick because of capacity constraints, and capacity is at the heart of this crisis. The problem is not a lack of money; it is a lack of urgency. There is not a lack of plans - we are seeing lots of plans - but a lack of delivery. The HSE national service plan for this year proposes just 134 additional hospital beds. That compares with the 297 beds committed to last year, a target that was missed. Two thirds of our hospitals are operating with unsafe bed occupancy levels and this lack of capacity has real consequences for real people, with overcrowded departments, cancelled procedures, exhausted staff and patients left waiting far too long for care they need. This is not a surprise. Capacity constraints and chronic understaffing are well known. The public has gone past the point of shock when it comes to our shambolic health system. Ask anyone how they think the system is performing and they will say they have no faith in the plans coming out of the Department of Health. They will shake their heads and roll their eyes if asked. The problem is that when failure is normalised, accountability disappears. Therefore, I am asking the Taoiseach to take responsibility and answer some straightforward questions. Why has a €420 million waiting list action plan failed to deliver on its minimal targets? Why is the 2026 service plan retreating on bed capacity? What changes will we see to ensure improvement this year?

Sentiment score: -0.09

Try as the Taoiseach may to dissemble them, the figures do not lie. They point to failure and are indefensible, and I stand over the comment of "shambolic". Anyone watching the news last night will have seen shambolic overcrowding and anyone watching or hearing of the experiences of the patient I referenced, or other patients whom we all know, will know that, while there is of course progress being made in some areas and that is great to see, it is still shambolic for all too many patients and they are still waiting too long. The Taoiseach talked about waiting times. Of course, that is crucial and the Taoiseach's own plan set a relatively modest target, that 90% of outpatients would wait less than a year by the end of 2025, but that target was missed. Look at the number waiting more than 18 months for an inpatient appointment. That number rose by more than 25% last year. By any measure, the 2025 waiting list action plan failed. Meanwhile, we are hearing advertisements from private hospitals like Kingsbridge Private Hospital in Belfast. That is no way to run a healthcare service, to see private hospitals from other jurisdictions touting for business in this way.

Sentiment score: -0.06

Can we expect an improvement this year for those who are facing these long waiting lists?

Sentiment score: 0.46