Photograph: iStockIreland’s health service failed to meet its goal of cutting the number of patients on hospital waiting lists for longer than target times to 50 per cent last year, new figures show. On Friday, the National Treatment Purchase Fund (NTPF) published the latest hospital waiting-list figures for December 2025. However, December’s figures show 64 per cent of patients on a hospital waiting list were waiting longer than these target times. This was highest among patients waiting for an outpatient appointment, of whom 68.2 per cent, or 417,663, were waiting longer than the target times. The December figures show the health service was just shy of this goal, with 84 per cent of these patients waiting less than a year.

Source: The Irish Times January 09, 2026 18:12 UTC