The Minister for Health Simon Harris has said the current waiting list at the nations hospitals is totally and unacceptable and every effort must be made to improve the situation.
Mr Harris who was speaking on Tuesday after latest INMO figures showed that over 650 people were waiting on trolleys across the country, said both the Department of Health and the HSE will have a busy period ahead especially in the wake of the recent flu epidemic.
However Minster Harris did question the length of the current list and claimed the INMO’s figures were off the mark.
In what seemed to be a defensive response the health minister denied that the figures given by the INMO were accurate, but instead claimed the current figures compiled by the HSE showed that the list was significantly smaller and it was an improvement on previous years.
Although Mr Harris did agree that any list regardless of its size was completely unacceptable in modern day Ireland.