Minister for Health publishes the Waiting Time Action Plan 2026
-
From: Department of Health
- Published on: 30 January 2026
- Last updated on: 30 January 2026
Minister for Health, Jennifer Carroll MacNeill TD, has published the Waiting Time Action Plan (WTAP) 2026, as part of this Government’s ongoing commitment to improving access to hospital care and reducing waiting times for patients.
Minister Carroll MacNeill said:
““The Waiting Time Action Plan is a multi-faceted approach with one overarching aim, to ensure people get access to faster care and achieve better health outcomes.
“It will ensure that we build on the progress we have already made in reforming our health service and continue to boost productivity and efficiency, while developing alternative care pathways and shifting towards care in community settings.”
Since the commencement of the Action Plan approach in September 2021, there have been important improvements in waiting times in hospitals across a range of metrics, as set out below.
The improvements have been achieved against the backdrop of increased demand for planned care services. Addressing this increased demand, while also working to sustainably reduce waiting times will require the health service to deliver more core activity through improved productivity and efficiencies, through ongoing reform and new enabling supports, and through targeted additional capacity.
Minister Carroll MacNeill said:
“In order to reduce waiting times we need to see more activity that results in patients receiving care, particularly those waiting the longest. As detailed in the Action Plan, this will be achieved through a combination of measures including service reforms and innovation; increased productivity and improved performance; investment in infrastructure and staffing; embracing digital solutions; and supplemented by targeted additional capacity via the NTPF.
“These initiatives are already having real-world impact, providing more timely access to care - our first surgical hub opened in Mount Carmel last February and over 3,700 procedures were carried out there by the end of the year. This resulted in a 74% reduction in patients waiting more than 12 months on relevant waiting lists compared to 2024. We can see how our growing infrastructure and expanding capacity results in people being treated faster and spending less time waiting. I am looking forward to seeing this success replicated with the five additional hubs due to open this year, while two further hubs in Sligo and Donegal are being progressed.
“Similarly, the HSE have implemented more efficient appointment scheduling through the new OPD Clinic Capacity Optimisation Programme or OPD Toolkit which operated across four hospitals last year and resulted in an estimated additional 2,700 new OPD appointments. That success will now be replicated across the health service and it’s projected that the HSE can deliver an additional 103,000 new OPD patient attendances this year.
“These are not just numbers, these are patients who are now being seen faster, getting earlier health interventions that will ultimately lead to better health outcomes.”
The WTAP sets out six overarching and interconnected targets, which will be achieved through the delivery of 36 actions under the themes of “Reforming Planned Care”, “Enabling Planned Care” and “Capacity Optimisation”.
The targets are:
- Sláintecare Wait Time Targets: 50% of patients to be waiting less than the Sláintecare wait time targets of 10 weeks for OPD appointments and 12 weeks for IPDC procedures; and 65% of patients to be waiting less than the Sláintecare wait time target of 12 weeks for GI Scopes.
- Weighted Average Wait Time: Reducing the weighted average wait time to < 5.5 months for OPD and IPDC and to < 3.5 months for GI Scopes.
- Patients waiting less than 12 months: 90% of patients to be waiting less than 12 months for first access to OPD services.
- OPD New to Return Ratio: To achieve an OPD new to return ratio of 1:2.0.
- Chronological Scheduling: To have 85% of routine elective appointments/procedures chronologically scheduled.
- Elective surgery same day of admission: 83% of inpatients to have their principal elective procedure conducted on day of admission.
CEO of the HSE Bernard Gloster said:
“The Waiting Time Action Plan is one which is totally focused on time waiting for people to access healthcare. While we have made improvements in recent years we are conscious that for many the wait time from referral to discharge is still too long. Building on the efforts of our staff in the past, the Minister has made available a variety of both reforms and resources which when combined in 2026 will take our improvements to a new level. Ease of comfort for the public followed by satisfaction for our staff are what will be the hallmarks of the achievements in the outcomes of this Plan. The HSE is totally committed to reducing time waiting for an ever increasing amount of people as a means to better health.”
The implementation of the WTAP 2026 will be overseen by the Waiting List Task Force, which is co-chaired by the Secretary General of the Department of Health and the CEO of the HSE. Effective oversight, through this governance structure, will help to reduce waiting times and bring us closer to having a public healthcare service in which everyone has timely access to high-quality scheduled care, where and when they need it.
Notes
The multi-annual Waiting List Action Plan approach was initiated in September 2021 to sustainably reduce and reform hospital waiting lists and waiting times. To emphasise renewed focus on improving waiting times, this year we have renamed the Plan to the Waiting Time Action Plan 2026.
As reflected in the Programme for Government and in the HSE’s National Service Plan (NSP) 2026, published last month, both the Department of Health and the HSE remain fully focused on improving access to planned care in our hospitals.
The Department of Health worked closely with the HSE and the National Treatment Purchase Fund (NTPF) to develop the specific actions and targets set out in this year’s WTAP. The WTAP 2026 sets out 36 actions under the three themes of “Reforming Planned Care”, “Enabling Planned Care” and “Capacity Optimisation”, including:
- Reforming Planned Care – sets out a number of initiatives to support the reform of planned care to drive the most efficient use of available resources in a patient-centred way, including actions spanning the patient pathway from referral to discharge to improve, standardise and reform clinical operations and clinical delivery. For example: through the use of enhanced productivity and efficiency measures for waiting list management including centralised referrals and pooled waiting lists; implementation of standardised protocols; individual case management plans for all patients waiting over two years; and the implementation of a number of HSE Access Accelerator innovation initiatives to reduce waiting times for Dermatology, Ophthalmology, Otolaryngology and Plastic Surgery.
- Enabling Planned Care – encompasses a number of digital and enabling technologies and tools that will support and facilitate the longer-term reform of waiting lists. This includes a range of initiatives such as: the implementation of the endoscopy reporting system and further roll out of the endoscopy electronic referral system; continued expansion of virtually-based patient engagement; further implementation of Artificial Intelligence and automation processes to support the management of certain aspects of waiting lists; use of data mining solutions to improve capacity utilisation; continuing to embed enhanced data visualisation dashboards across hospitals and Health Regions to improve productivity and performance oversight and further roll out of features within the HSE Health App to support waiting list management.
- Optimising Capacity – sets out a number of initiatives to maximise scheduled care capacity, such as; a focus on increasing the ratio of new to return OPD activity; further deployment of the OPD Clinic Capacity Optimisation (i.e. the OPD productivity toolkit); HSE and NTPF outsourcing of particular treatments for longer waiters; NTPF administrative validation of waiting lists; facilitating increased theatre efficiency for surgical procedures; chronological scheduling within all specialties; commitments in relation to paediatric spinal surgeries; as well as activity to be delivered through the new surgical hubs, including in the five additional surgical hubs, which are expected to open in 2026.
Significant progress has been made under the Action Plan approach, including in the weighted average length of time that patients on hospital waiting lists have been waiting. Between 2016 and 2021, the weighted average waiting time for each of OPD, IPDC and GI Scopes increased.
However, since 2021, these metrics have improved significantly. For example, as of the end of December 2025, the weighted average waiting time for patients on the total hospital waiting list improved by c. 46% from 12.2 months to 6.6 months. Broken down by list, the time decrease was as follows:
- The weighted average waiting time for OPD reduced from 12.8 months in September 2021 to 6.8 months at the end of December 2025. This represents a decrease of approximately 47%;
- Over the same period, the weighted average waiting time for IPDC decreased from 9.1 months to 6.4 months – a c. 29% fall;
- For GI Scopes, the weighted average waiting time fell from 6.9 months to 3.5 months – a c. 49% decrease – during that period.
The waiting time reductions achieved since 2021 show that we are making progress towards our ultimate goal of achieving the Sláintecare maximum waiting time targets, i.e. 10 weeks for OPD and 12 weeks for IPDC and GI Scopes. For example:
- To the end of December 2025 there has been a c. 14% reduction in the number of people on the waiting list who are waiting longer than the 10- and 12- week Sláintecare targets since September 2021. This equates to approximately 82,000 less people breaching these targets.
While we are focused on improving waiting times, changes in waiting list volumes continue to be important indicators of planned care performance. As such, planned care performance in 2025 was challenging with increases in waiting list volumes continuing through most of the year. As of the end of December 2025, there were approximately 754,000 (i.e. 753,763) patients on the active hospital waiting list. This figure represents an increase of c. 11.8% since the end of 2024.
To the end of December 2025 there were 1,928,728 patients added to hospital waiting lists, which is an increase of 6.3% on 2024, whereas 1,848,927 patients were removed from these waiting lists, which represented a c. 2% increase on 2024 activity levels. This increased demand was a contributing factor in terms of the challenges experienced in planned care in 2025.
The HSE has attributed the increases in waiting list additions to both demographic (e.g. population growth, aging population) and non-demographic challenges (e.g. increased awareness of services, new service developments, chronic disease and pent-up demand post COVID).
As a result of these demand challenges, the anticipated progress towards the four WLAP waiting time reduction targets was not achieved by the end of 2025.
However, there was some evidence of improved performance against these targets in the latter months of the year, both at a national and Regional level.
In addition, a number of new initiatives last year indicated how optimising our capacity utilisation can deliver increased productivity and reduced waiting times, while still representing value for money.