Hospital waiting list figures, to be released next week, will show that the numbers of patients waiting for treatment have dropped by only about 1,500 during the first nine months of this year.
The figures will be released by the National Treatment Purchase Fund (NTPF), which now has responsibility for compiling waiting list statistics.
Concern has been expressed that no waiting list figures for this year have yet been published. When the Department of Health compiled the data, before the NTPF being given responsibility for the management of waiting lists by the former minister, Mr Micheál Martin, waiting list figures were released every few months.
The last waiting list figures, published in May, indicated that the Department of Health recorded 27,318 people on hospital waiting lists at the end of December 2003. When these figures were then validated by the NTPF, the numbers were reduced considerably.
Some 4,500 people were removed because they were either not available for treatment or not medically suitable for treatment, or they no longer required treatment or had asked for their treatment to be postponed. A further 3,000 people were taken off the list because they were found to be waiting for non-surgical procedures.
As a result of this exercise, the NTPF said there were just 19,591 patients owaiting lists at the end of last year.
Since May the NTPF has sought detailed information on the numbers waiting for in-patient and day-case treatment, information which few hospitals and health boards have been able to provide.
As a result, when the latest waiting list figures are published next week, showing that only about 1,500 people have been removed from the lists over the first three-quarters of this year, the NTPF will say this is because it has been unable, up to now, to properly validate the most recent figures.
Labour's health spokeswoman Ms Liz McManus, yesterday called on the Minister for Health, Ms Harney, to explain why no hospital waiting list figures for this year had yet been published.
"It is simply not good enough that the latest available hospital waiting list figures are almost 12 months out of date," Ms McManus said.
"Responsibility for the issuing of hospital waiting list figures was transferred by the former minister for health, Micheál Martin, to the National Treatment Purchase Fund. But, far from speeding up the flow of information, this simply seems to have created a further layer of bureaucracy that has resulted in publication of waiting list figures being pushed back even further."