More than 284,000 people are waiting for initial appointments across primary and community care services, new figures reveal.
Over 40% of those waiting – or 120,640 patients – are children; with waits of more than a year commonplace across some services.
Waiting lists across eight primary care services have increased gradually during this year and come with further figures showing the number of patients on hospital waiting lists climbing towards a million.
The latest data was revealed by the Health Service Executive in response to a parliamentary question from Sinn Féin Health spokesperson David Cullinane.
Almost one in three of the 258,629 patients waiting for an initial appointment across audiology, dietetics, occupational therapy, ophthalmology, physiotherapy, podiatry and psychology have been waiting for more than a year.
Physiotherapy has the largest overall waiting list, with 90,003 people waiting for an initial assessment.
Of those, 27,718 have been waiting for more than 52 weeks.
The longest waiting list for children is for those waiting to see an occupational therapist.
A total of 30,148 children are awaiting a first-time OT assessment, with 17,319 of them waiting more than a year.
Occupational Therapy can help infants and children participate better in everyday life, teaching them new skills or helping them recover after injury.
There are 21,784 children awaiting an initial assessment for speech and language therapy, including 1,647 who have been waiting for more than two years.
There are another 6,475 children awaiting initial therapy, 681 of whom have been waiting more than two years, and 9,593 awaiting further therapy, including 751 waiting more than two years.
In psychology, 32,038 children are waiting for an initial appointment and 3,389 have been waiting more than a year.
The data also revealed major regional differences in terms of access to services.
Of the 13,309 people waiting for a physiotherapy assessment in counties Waterford and Wexford, 8,484 have been waiting for more than a year.
This represents almost 64% of the entire physiotherapy list in the area.
In podiatry, 422 of the 429 people on the Waterford Wexford list have been waiting more than a year.
Approximately two thirds of the 2,494 people waiting for a dietetics appointment – which helps with nutrition – in the Midlands have been waiting more than a year.
Cullinane says plan needs to be developed to recruit staff
Mr Cullinane described some of the figures as “appalling”; and said a plan should be developed to recruit the staff needed to tackle the backlogs.
“These community waiting lists are on top of almost one million people already waiting for care in our acute hospital,” the Waterford TD said.
“People cannot be left waiting this long for care that should be available quickly and close to home,” he said.
“I have published legislation to require the National Treatment Purchase Fund to publish community waiting lists every month, because we need the same level of transparency for primary and community care as we expect for hospitals,” he added.
Deputy Cullinane also pointed to how the growing waiting lists for primary and community services came despite the promise of Sláintecare to shift care away from acute hospitals and into community settings.
HSE says number of new measures to tackle waiting lists
In response, a HSE spokesperson said: “The HSE regrets that anyone would have to wait to access care and is committed to delivering efficient, high-quality services for all patients and service users.
“Increasing access to primary and community care is a key priority of the 2026 HSE National Service Plan.”
They also added how a number of new measures were in development to help tackle the waiting lists including “the recruitment of 202 additional staff (therapy, case co-ordinators, student placements)”
The growing waiting lists come with an increased focus on budgetary overruns in the health service as the HSE halts and cuts back on both insourcing and outsourcing to tackle waiting lists as part of new budgetary curbs.
The Minister for Health Jennifer Carroll MacNeill published a Waiting Time Action Plan in January to tackle hospital waiting lists.
She said the annual publication of an Action Plan since 2021 had helped drive down hospital waiting times across some metrics.
However, Ms Carroll MacNeill acknowledged in the Dáil in July that too many people are waiting too long to access primary care and community services.
“A total of 1.3 million patients were seen by primary care therapists in 2025, which is significant.
“There is no question, however, that there is rising demand and increasing complexity, particularly for children’s services. This is placing sustained pressure on services nationally,” she told the chamber.
She said the Government was working at building capacity through the recruitment of 200 additional primary care posts in 2026 as well as an increase in student training places for health to ensure a greater a pipeline of posts going forward.
A spokesperson for the Department of Health said “the Department and the HSE are implementing a joint national programme to address Primary Care therapy waiting lists, including the Long Waiters Initiative, which aims to remove more than 80,000 long waiters from Physiotherapy, Occupational Therapy and Speech and Language Therapy waiting lists.
“The programme is currently being rolled out across Integrated Healthcare Areas and is supported by additional therapy staffing, improved waiting list management, and service reform measures. Where the programme is being implemented, significant progress has been made on reducing waiting lists, with almost 24,000 removed from waiting lists to end-July”.
“The Department will continue to work closely with the HSE to improve access to services and reduce waiting times for patients,” they added.