A shortage of doctors is contributing to hospital waiting lists.
That's the view of the Irish Hospital Consultants Association.
Figures from the National Treatment Purchase Fund show more than 600,000 patients are waiting for their first hospital outpatient consultation.
Professor Anne Doherty, vice president of the Irish Hospital Consultants Association, says doctors are leaving for better pay and conditions.
"Since the contract changed and there's a discriminatory kind of contract arrangement in place, we know that more and more doctors are leaving Ireland and they're not taking up consultant posts here. This basically means that at the moment, we have 900 unfilled consultant posts in the country, across all the specialties, so those are posts that are unfilled by a permanent consultant."
