Brian O'Connell

But I suppose the question here really is,

At a time when waiting lists are growing, why is this equipment sitting idle by the time the hospital opens, maybe for three years, if you fast forward to next year?

And why is it sitting here on the site and not being used?

Now, David Cullinan, who's Sinn Féin's health spokesperson, he gave me his reaction to the fact high-tech diagnostic equipment is lying idle on this new site.

And I'm sure it must be difficult for clinicians who are looking at their paediatric waiting list for diagnostic services and they're hearing about state-of-the-art, top-of-the-range equipment sitting their line idle.

Yeah, because we had data up to the end of December last year.

So I was trying to find out, well, what's the picture over the last six months?

Because obviously it's quite dynamic.

It can change very quickly.

Partly why information is difficult to get is because for the past two years, a new national waiting list management protocol is actually being put in place by the NTPF.

Now, there's a pilot project up and running and some quarterly reports on how many are waiting are given to the Department of Health.

I'd asked the HSE.

They referred my query on to the NTPF.

They sent me a reply telling me all about this new protocol.

They said the rollout is now in its final phase.

When it's complete, then they'll be able to publish wait times and waiting list data.

But despite requests, they weren't able to send me any detail.

Now, the latest data up until now we had, as I said, was from December 2025.

Well, it tells us that, for example, the latest data doesn't include all hospitals, I should say.

So CUH in Cork, Bantry and Mallow are not included in this data.