HSE warns of further cancellations as 833,000 now on waiting lists

A record 883,000 people are now on hospital waiting lists and 21,000 patients are waiting over a year for crucial treatment.

Thousands of hospital appointments will be cancelled again next week due to the cyberattack on the Health Service Executive's (HSE) IT system.

Health officials are warning it will be months and not weeks to fix the problems associated with hacking.

A record 883,000 people are now on hospital waiting lists and 21,000 patients are waiting over a year for crucial treatment.

The HSE says the situation has improved slightly in recent days, with some computer systems working again.

But it says there will still be 'significant interruption' after the Bank Holiday Weekend.

Up to 30,000 appointments have been cancelled in seven hospitals in the west and north-west over the past three weeks.

Tony Canavan, CEO of the Saolta Group which runs these seven hospitals, says the end is not in sight yet.

Mr Canavan told Newstalk: "I think it's only fair to say to patients that at this stage what we're planning for and what we're anticipating is that there will still be significant interruptions to the service that would normally be provided next week as well.

"I would expect that there will be an increase in the availability of appointments from next week, but we will still be dealing with very significantly reduced capacity in our IT systems.

"We will still be using a lot of manual workarounds, and I guess with that carrying significant risk as well in the context of delivering care."

Mr Canavan added: "It will vary on a site by site basis, and we will be doing our very best to make sure that we make as much as possible available to patients as we can."

Dr Gabrielle Colleran from the Irish Hospital Consultants Association says staff shortages are also a major problem.

"We just don't have enough consultants, Dr Colleran says.

"We field half a team every day, and we do amazingly well for the number we have but when you have the lowest number of consultants per capita, that affects how, or how early people can be seen in outpatients.

"We just don't have enough staff on the team."