Press Release: Friday 13 June 2025
Monthly waiting list figures – May 2025
The latest hospital waiting list figures for May published today by the National Treatment Purchase Fund (NTPF) underline the progress achieved through the multi-annual action plan approach to addressing long wait times for care. The latest hospital activity report published by the Health Service Executive (HSE), demonstrates increased levels of hospital activity in the delivery of scheduled and unscheduled care services.
The figures published today, demonstrate continued progress, including in terms of those patients waiting longest. There has been a c. 5% reduction in the total number of patients waiting over 12 months since this time last year, and a corresponding reduction of c. 12% in the number waiting over 18 months.
The health service has seen significant longer-term improvements in waiting times since the multi-annual Waiting List Action Plan (WLAP) approach was initiated in September 2021. The Minister for Health, Jennifer Carroll MacNeill published the Waiting List Action Plan (WLAP) 2025 in February. The WLAP 2025 embodies the government’s commitment to reducing waiting times for patients, thereby, improving access to hospital care.
The figures indicate that at the end of May 2025, there were 716,573 patients on the active hospital scheduled care waiting list. The delivery of elective care in the early months of the year is impacted by the winter surge in demand for unscheduled care and because of elevated levels of respiratory illness circulating. However, whilst the increase in waiting list volumes to date is an anticipated multi-annual trend, it is continuing to stabilise. Positive signs are evident in the time that patients on lists have been waiting, which although they have increased since the beginning of the year are now showing month on month improvement since April. Improvements seen in the proportion of patients waiting withing Sláintecare targets first seen in March have also continued through to May. Both metrics have also shown improvement in comparison with the same period last year.
Ireland’s acute hospitals are delivering higher levels of activity and treating many more patients than ever before. The latest hospital rolling 12-month activity report published by the HSE gives insight into acute activity levels, with millions of patients being seen and treated annually within our hospital service. The report outlines that there was c. 3.98 million OPD, and c. 1.93 million IPDC attendances from March 2024 to February 2025. In comparison with the levels of activity delivered in the full year 2023, these figures represent increases of c. 9% for OPD and c.4% for IPDC activity.
In addition to this planned care, our hospitals also treated c. 1.84 million patients during this same period in emergency care, which represents a c. 9% increase on the full year 2023 and reflects the continuing demands on our hospitals. Increased Emergency Department attendances and demand in unscheduled care can result in some cancellations of elective procedures, and the impact this will have on patients is recognised.
There were c. 807k patients added to, and c. 765k patients removed from our acute hospital waiting lists in the year to date. While the health service does not wish to see a growth in numbers waiting for care, growth in the number of referrals to our hospital services has a positive aspect as it is indicative of people accessing the services that they need, an increased awareness of services and reflects an expansion of services.
For 2025, further investment has been secured to continue the multi-annual approach to reduce and reform acute hospital waiting lists. The governance and implementation of WLAP 2025 is continuously monitored by the Waiting List Task Force. With the 2025 WLAP, the Department of Health, the HSE and the NTPF are taking the next steps in evolving the multi-annual approach towards achieving this government’s vision of a public healthcare service where everyone has timely and transparent access to high-quality scheduled care services, where and when they require them.