I wish to be associated with the warm welcome of the funding for the North Quays in Waterford. It is a great day for Waterford. Well done to all involved.

I raise the issue of spinal surgeries for children with scoliosis and spina bifida. The Minister earlier this year presented a plan which, in fairness, was a collaboration of working with the hospitals, but also with the Opposition. The plan set out funding on the one hand but also a number of targets on the other. The first target is that we would reduce the number of children waiting from 224 in January to 128 by the end of the year. That target will not be met. The second target was that no child should wait longer than four months. That target will not be met either. The third target was that we would spend the money that was allocated - €19 million. We had an admission from the Minister yesterday that none of those targets would be met. Now we have problems with even the €19 million funding that was announced being spent because of staffing issues and because the surgical theatres will not come on as quickly as possible. We need to get our act together on this issue and make sure the funding that was announced is actually spent.

Like the Deputy, I want to make sure that every child waiting for an operation gets it as quickly as possible. We need to acknowledge the extraordinary work that is going on across multiple sites by our healthcare workers. The main target was to increase radically the number of children who are getting this urgent surgery that they need. As the Deputy will have heard Dr. Green say on RTÉ recently and others, they are not only meeting all of those targets, they are exceeding them. One thing has happened that they were not expecting, which is that there has been a very high additional number of children referred into Children’s Health Ireland, CHI, partly from private practice and partly from Galway. Because of the additional unexpected number of children coming in, it will not reach the target of zero children by the end of the year. However, I am very happy to share with the Deputy the latest information from CHI. It will have gone from several hundred children at the start of this year down to fewer than 50 waiting more than four months by the end of December. Critically, it confirmed to me that it is on course for what we all want, which is every single child to be treated in less than four months.