By Dot Kirby BBC Northern Ireland health correspondent

Northern Ireland has the worst hospital waiting lists in Europe, the BBC has learned.

For some years, it has had the longest queues in the United Kingdom - but now it has emerged that it is actually the worst in the European Union.

There are 15 countries in the European Union and 11 of them keep national waiting list totals.

Weighting these for the province's population and theirs, all of them are shorter than Northern Ireland's - most much shorter.

There seems little doubt that lists in the province are the worst in the EU

Four countries do not keep national totals but do keep track of how long people have to wait for treatment.

Overall, these countries say their treatment is faster than that in Northern Ireland.

Some countries in Europe had shorter queues than might be expected, some longer.

Calculations

Portugal's queue is about 10,000 people longer than in Northern Ireland - but its population is about six times higher.

Denmark, with a population of just over 5 million, had 85,000 people waiting more than three months for treatment.

Health boards are in breach of charter standards if patients have been waiting more than 12 months for heart surgery

A spokesman there told the BBC that they knew they were bad compared to the rest of Europe - and then they found out about the UK and realised the waiting times there were worse.

Interesting though it is to do a straw poll of European countries, it is hardly scientific.

We do not know, for instance, how they calculate their queues. Are we really comparing like with like?

However, the difference in most cases was so pronounced, there seems little doubt that lists in the province are the worst in the EU.

But it is really in comparing Northern Ireland with the rest of the UK that we know that similar calculations are done.

Northern Ireland scores badly. Perhaps the most extreme example is when we look at people who wait in excess of Patient's Charter standards.

Northern Ireland measures these slightly differently to everyone else.

In Northern Ireland, the health boards are in breach of charter standards if patients have been waiting more than 12 months for heart surgery - or 18 months for everything else.

Northern Ireland has 7,745 people in breach. Heart surgery would account for several hundred people so let us say we have 7,000 people who have been waiting more than 18 months.

The equivalent figure for the whole of England is just nine.