Department denies TD's claim that it is delaying hospital waiting list figures

The Department of Health and Children has rejected a claim that it is delaying the publication of hospital waiting list figures to avoid potentially negative media coverage.

The Labour Party's spokeswoman on health, Ms Liz McManus TD, said she believed the latest figures, due to be published in mid-September, were "deliberately being withheld".

"The Dáil will not be sitting next week, and I suspect that the lists will be published over the bank holiday weekend, in an effort to limit media and political criticism, in a similar manner to the way in which the decision to increase the threshold for the drugs refund scheme and hospital charges was announced late on a Friday evening in July."

She noted it was almost six months since the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, and the Minister for Health, Mr Martin, gave a commitment to eliminate hospital waiting lists by May 2004. "I am now challenging the Minister to publish the full waiting lists without further delay, so that the public can see for itself what progress, if any, has been made towards meeting the Government's pre-election commitment of clearing all waiting lists within two years."

She said limited figures published for the Cork area showed an increase of 26 per cent in the numbers waiting for treatment at Cork University Hospital.

Given recent cutbacks in the sector, she said waiting lists nationally were likely to have increased since March.

A spokesman for the Department said the latest figures, for the quarter ended June 2002, would be published shortly. "We absolutely reject there has been a delay in publishing the figures. There is, however, a complex process which goes into calculating and ensuring their validity," he said.

It is understood processing the figures has taken longer than normal on this occasion as it is the first in which day case activity will be recorded.

Referring to this issue in the Dáil last week, Mr Martin said the Department had "set out to regularise and standardise the reporting of waiting lists". He added that the Department hoped to be in a position to publish "the first complete set of data on day case waiting lists and on waiting times in the near future".

Ms McManus said the relevant figures were "always published in September, give or take a week or two". She added: "You can be sure if they made happy reading they would have been published already. The Minister hates to give out bad news."

The Department spokesman said, however, "there is no set schedule or calendar as to when the figures are published. This can vary on a range of administrative factors".