Cardiac surgery in the public health sector is currently carried out at three centres. Adult cardiac surgery is performed at the Mater Misericordiae Hospital and Cork University Hospital. Paediatric cardiac surgery is performed at Our Lady's Hospital for Sick Children, Crumlin. In 1997 the Mater Hospital and Cork University Hospital were funded to perform a total of 1,400 adult cardiac surgery procedures and Our Lady's Hospital for Sick Children was funded to perform 260 paediatric cardiac surgery procedures.
Public patient waiting list statistics are collected by hospitals and furnished to my Department on a quarterly basis. At the end of December 1997, the most recent period for which information is available, there were 1,371 patients awaiting cardiac surgery.
As I stated in my reply to questions in this House on 16 June 1998, my Department allocated a sum of £1.7 million in 1997 under the waiting list initiative with the specific aim of reducing the national cardiac surgery waiting list for adults and children. A combination of approaches was used by hospitals to achieve this objective. As well as purchasing additional cardiac surgery procedures, patients were also reassessed with a view to using alternative therapies such as interventional cardiology or medical treatment, as clinically appropriate. I am pleased to say that this initiative was very successful in reducing the adult waiting list by 203 between September 1997 and December 1997.
This year, a sum of £3 million is being made available specifically for cardiac surgery patients. As in 1997, the aim will be to reduce the overall numbers waiting for cardiac surgery and it is expected that the successful strategy applied in 1997 will be adopted again. Final decisions on the allocation of the cardiac initiative funding will be announced shortly and I am confident that this will have a positive impact on both the overall numbers waiting and the average waiting times. However, I am not in a position to be definite about year end fugures, given the difficulty in predicting with accuracy how demand will evolve over the course of the year.