James Cox
The recruitment and retention crisis in the HSE has led to 1.3 million people being left on health service waiting lists.
That is according to Sinn Féin, following the news that one in four people are waiting for essential treatment.
More than 200,000 people are on lists for therapy services with 60,000 of these waiting over a year for an initial assessment.
Sinn Féin health Spokesperson and Waterford TD David Cullinane said the Health Minister needs to bring in more staff to deal with the huge backlogs.
Mr Cullinane said: "That illustrates again the need for a workforce planning strategy put in place by the Minister for Health, that ensures we can train more specialists to give us the opportunity to recruit more. But also to look at retention and pay issues, to make sure we can retain many of them [health staff] who unfortunately have left the system over the last number of years."
