Fianna Fail has slammed Health Minister James Reilly's record on waiting lists.

The party's public service reform spokesperson Sean Fleming has expressed concern at the news that waiting lists were continuing to worsen.

"The number of patients waiting for treatment as in-patients or day cases has increased by more than 18 per cent between September 2012 and June 2013. A total of 49,290 are now on waiting lists, significantly up on 41,732 last September."

Deputy Fleming also pointed out that the number of long waiters had increased substantially in recent months.

The total number of patients waiting over six months for in patient and day treatment has almost doubled since December - from 6,038 to 11,985 in June.

"The figures waiting more than nine months show an extraordinary increase of 3,621% from 107 last December to 3,982 at the end of June," Deputy Fleming said.

Included in this figure are 849 patients currently waiting over a year for treatment, compared to only 36 at the end of December last.

"Year on year, waiting lists were 4,300 worse in June 2013 than in June 2012. The year on year increase in April was 1,884 and in May it was 3,002. So not only are waiting lists growing, so is the annual rate of increase," Deputy Flaming said.

He claimed the figures 'gave the lie' to Minister Reilly's claims to be making progress on tackling waiting lists.

"It seems that the Special Delivery Unit was just a short term fix that has failed to tackle the underlying problems."

Sick children wait years for appointments

Groundhog day for our failing health system