Press Release: Wednesday 12 February 2025
Minister Carroll MacNeill publishes the Waiting List Action Plan 2025
- Focus on further reductions in waiting times for scheduled hospital care
- Funding of €420 million has been allocated to the WLAP 2025
Minister for Health, Jennifer Carroll MacNeill TD, has today (12 February) published the Waiting List Action Plan (WLAP) 2025, Government’s commitment to reducing waiting times for patients and improving access to hospital care.
Minister Carroll MacNeill stated:
“Our people are living longer, healthier lives and will need timely and transparent access to high quality scheduled patient care in the years ahead. In the Programme for Government we committed to further reduce waiting times which will bring a number of benefits from a patient perspective, in terms of improved outcomes and a better experience of the health service.
The Waiting List Action Plan 2025 is an important milestone in that journey. Significant funding of €420 million has been allocated to the Waiting List Action Plan 2025, comprising €190 million for the HSE and €230 million for the National Treatment Purchase Fund (NTPF), which will focus on sustainably reducing the amount of time people are waiting for care.”
Table 1: Weighted Average Waiting Time improvements under the WLAP approach
This year’s WLAP focuses on reducing waiting times for scheduled care and sets out four key targets aimed at achieving this objective, namely:
- Having 50% of patients waiting less than the Sláintecare wait time targets (i.e. 10 weeks for outpatients (OPD) and 12 weeks for inpatient and day case (IPDC)) by the end of 2025;
- Reducing the weighted average wait time for scheduled care to 5.5 months;
- Increasing the proportion of OPD patients waiting less than 12 months to 90% by the end of 2025;
- Reducing the proportion of patients waiting over 24 months, or at risk of waiting over 24 months by the end of 2025, by 90% this year.
The WLAP 2025 takes account of the new Regional structures within the Health Service Executive (HSE) and the ongoing transition towards a more integrated model of care delivery, in that the national WLAP will be underpinned by specific Regional commitments in terms of activity, productivity and reforms. This new approach will afford each of the Regional Executive Officers flexibility in terms of the specific actions they prioritise, in order to support the achievement of the overarching national targets contained in the WLAP 2025.
In relation to the WLAP, Bernard Gloster, CEO of the HSE noted:
“The Waiting List Action Plan 2025 is a critical step in addressing the challenges our health service faces head-on. This Plan outlines a multi-faceted approach to reducing waiting times, enhancing capacity, and streamlining processes to ensure we are not only meeting the immediate needs of patients, but also preparing for future demands. It builds on the efforts of the past, recognising the progress we have made, while acknowledging the work still to be done.”
Significant progress has been made through the action plan to reduce waiting times in our acute hospitals. Since the commencement of the WLAP approach in September 2021, there has been an almost 64% reduction in the number of long waiters (i.e. those patients waiting over 12 months) up to the end of December 2024. This equates to over 179,000 people.
The waiting time reductions achieved under the WLAP approach demonstrate sustained progress towards our ultimate goal of achieving the maximum waiting times set out in the 2017 Sláintecare report, e.g. 10 weeks for OPD and 12 weeks for IPDC. Since September 2021, there has been a c. 25% reduction in the number of people on the waiting list who are waiting longer than the Sláintecare targets. This equates to approximately 148,800 less people breaching these targets.
As of December 2024, the percentage of patients waiting less than the Sláintecare wait time targets stood at approximately 35%. Through the successful implementation of WLAP 2025, the aim is to improve this proportion to 50% by the end of this year.
With the 2025 WLAP, the Department of Health, the HSE and the NTPF are aiming to progress towards the ultimate vision of a world-class public healthcare service in which everyone has timely and transparent access to high-quality scheduled care, where and when they need it.