Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

This issue is not relevant to the meeting we just had, but it has come to my attention a couple of times recently. I refer to waiting lists for cataracts, which are very acute, particularly if people live alone, and they do. Their sight diminishes at an alarming rate having been on a waiting list for two or three years. Suddenly, they panic, and the family come together and decide to go private and get it done in a week. Why can we not get it done in a week? What is the answer to that question? The facility is there. We have the purchase scheme available to us. We can and should use it because we do not have to travel anywhere out of the country to get an available facility. The sad part about it is that we will not countenance a request for any kind of contribution from the patient at all. That is archaic and old-fashioned. That is old-style business that we should not have to put up with at all. If the patient is entitled to and needs the surgical treatment or laser treatment or whatever it is and needs it now, we should be compassionate enough to say that this person cannot see, drive, walk or go anywhere. He or she might live alone and be dependent on everything around them unless somebody leads them around. We should be able to make an exception in those circumstances and say that under ordinary circumstances, if we did not have a long waiting list, we would have been able to do this in the first instance and we should have done it. I strongly urge that we take that into account and make provision for this. Friends of mine since we were all teenagers together were waiting for a couple of years for something that is very simple and readily available. The Minister of State is here and I will ask her to take account of this She is an expert in the field she is in. I ask, if it is at all possible, to ensure that we take account of those particular cases with a view to allowing some payment to be made. It does not have to be the whole lot or the full contribution, but it should be at least a recognition of the plight they were in due to the waiting lists.