Sixty thousand patients fail to attend outpatient hospital appointments, contributing to lengthy waiting lists, the Dáil has heard.

Minister for Health Simon Harris said that every year more than three million people attended hospital outpatient appointments.

He also said there was an increase of more than 4 per cent in the numbers attending in the first half of this year compared to the same period in 2015.

But there was a 15 per cent “do-not-attend” rate for hospital appointments. This worked out at “approximately 60,000 missed attendances at our hospitals every year.”

Mr Harris said: “I am not blaming patients for this. Perhaps patients are waiting too long and by the time the operation can be carried out, it is not needed or circumstances have changed.”

People might forget to attend “but that costs the health service a great deal. It also wastes a large number of hospital appointments.”

The Minister told Fine Gael TD Bernard Durkan he intended to introduce a reminder system of text messages.

‘Bugbear’

He also wanted more GPs to perform procedures and it was a “bugbear” with many of them that they had to refer people for an outpatient appointment.

Sinn Féin health spokeswoman Louise O’Reilly said her party had proposed an integrated system of waiting lists but she was still waiting for the Minister to arrange to meet her about it despite publicly saying he would do so.

The Minister said he had asked the HSE’s e-health people to look at the issue but there was currently no system to identify individual patients. However, the “unique health identifier is due in 2017”.