New figures have shown 70,219 patients were waiting for an appointment for their inpatient or day case treatment at the end of March.

The latest public hospital waiting list data was published by the National Treatment Purchase Fund (NTPF).

That also showed that 22,192 patients were waiting to receive an appointment for a GI endoscopy.

While 546,630 patients were waiting for a first hospital outpatient consultation.

Separate pre-admit data shows that 29,718 have been given a date for their inpatient/daycase or endoscopy procedure.

Some 76,539 patients are in the planned procedure category, and 63,093 of these have "indicative dates in the future" or already have an appointment.

The NTPF said: "These are patients who have already had treatment and require further treatment at a future date (e.g. a patient who has had a scope may require surveillance monitoring scopes in the future) and have been assigned indicative dates for treatment.

"These indicative dates are determined by a clinician and treatment before these dates would not be appropriate."

A further 11,559 patients were classified as suspended.

These are patients who are temporarily unfit or unable to attend due to clinical or personal/social reasons.

This category is also used where patients are being treated through various insourcing or outsourcing initiatives.

The NTPF has been allocated €75m in 2019 - an increase of €20m on 2018.

In 2019, the fund has said it will arrange treatment for 25,000 patients on the active inpatient/daycase waiting list, 5,000 gastrointestinal endoscopies and 40,000 outpatient appointments.