To ask the Minister of Health, Social Services and Public Safety, following a target that no patient should wait more than 18 weeks for their first outpatient appointment, to detail why 47.6 per cent of patients are waiting more than 18 weeks.

It is regrettable that more people are waiting to be seen and are waiting longer due to the financial constraints that led to the decision to suspend independent sector and additional in-house activity last year. It was extremely frustrating that we wasted £200m of taxpayers money over the last 3 years in penalties because of the failure to implement welfare reform. Such a sum could have funded many thousands of assessments and procedures. However I was pleased to recently announce the allocation of a further £30 million, which follows the Executive’s earlier allocation of £40 million to reduce waiting lists. The combined £70 million will ensure in the region of 1‎50,000 extra assessments, tests and procedures will be completed.

Provisional figures for February 2016 show that those waiting more than 18 weeks for a first outpatient appointment have fallen by 9% and those waiting longer than 26 weeks for an inpatient day case has fallen by nearly 13%. It is clear that the investments we are directing towards waiting lists are making a difference. But it will take time and significant non recurrent and recurrent investment to bring waiting lists back to an acceptable level while simultaneously increasing capacity to meet demand. My commitment to an additional £30 million is an important step to ensuring continued progress.