I am raising this issue tonight because I continue to hear from people across County Cork who are waiting far too long simply to be seen by an orthopaedic consultant at South Infirmary Victoria University Hospital, SIVUH. The scale of this problem is extremely concerning. The most recent figures provided to me showed that 7,444 patients are waiting for an outpatient orthopaedic appointment at SIVUH. Let us pause for a moment to consider what that figure actually means. Almost 7,500 people are waiting for an assessment by a specialist. Many of these people are living with significant pain, reduced mobility and a deterioration in their quality of life while they wait. I want to give one specific example from my constituency.
John is a young man who has been on the urgent outpatient waiting list for an orthopaedic consultant since February 2025. He has been waiting for well over a year and he still cannot get an appointment. He is not someone who has been categorised as "routine"; he has been classified as "urgent". The situation has become so difficult for him that his pain is now having a serious impact on his daily life. In May this year, because of the severity of his pain, he was referred to a pain management consultant but surprise, surprise, he cannot get an appointment for that either. We, therefore, have a young man who has been waiting since February 2025 to see an orthopaedic consultant despite being categorised as urgent. His pain has become so severe that he requires a specialist referral and now he is waiting again. That is exactly what I mean when I say that behind every waiting list figure is a person. John is not a number. He is a young man who wants to get on with his life, who wants to work, who wants to be active and who wants to have his condition properly assessed and treated. Instead, he is stuck in a system where one waiting list leads to another. I am sure many other people in Cork are in a similar position.
I have been contacted by constituents waiting for hip and knee assessments. I have heard from older people whose mobility and independence are being affected. I have heard from people whose conditions are impacting on their ability to work and to carry out normal day-to-day activities. Perhaps most concerning, I have been contacted about patients who have been categorised as urgent yet still cannot get an indicative date for when they will be seen. This is extremely difficult for patients and their families to understand. If a patient is told by their GP that they need an urgent orthopaedic assessment, they quite reasonably expect that the health service would find a pathway to deal with that urgency. Instead, people are waiting and being left in limbo. They do not know when they will be seen. They do not know when they will receive a diagnosis. They do not know when they might begin treatment and all the while, they are living with pain.
The SIVUH plays a hugely important role in Cork and I want to put on the record my appreciation for all the doctors, nurses, consultants and all the staff working there. The staff are not the problem; the problem is capacity. We have to acknowledge that demand for orthopaedic services has increased significantly. We have an ageing population, people are living longer and they rightly want to remain active and independent for as long as possible but the current level of capacity is clearly not meeting the demand. We cannot simply accept that thousands of people in Cork should remain on an orthopaedic waiting list for months or, in some cases, years. I have been raising this issue directly with hospital management and HSE South West for many months. I welcome the fact that the options are being explored but almost 12 months later, we have no options presented to us. I would really like an update on this matter.
