Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses for coming today. I would like to go back to the basics and ask what the problem is because if one looks at our healthcare system from the outside, this should not be happening. We have young boys and girls waiting for operations for spina bifida. The average spinal curvature in cases involving scoliosis in Europe is 50 degrees, whereas in Ireland it takes so long to access surgery that curvature reaches 100 degrees and leads to preventable lifelong problems. We have people waiting more than one year to be accessed for wheelchairs. We heard at a meeting last week that a child aged two and a half years for whom there are suspicions of autism will not be offered treatment until he or she reaches six years in some parts of the country. We are all aware that on a human level this is destroying people's lives.

In orthopaedics I ended up dealing with people in Cappagh Hospital because the waiting lists had become so long. One of the clinicians told me that there was a reluctance in some cases to take on new patients. The waiting lists were so long and the patients were in such severe pain that there was a fear that they would kill themselves or become addicted to morphine before they got to see a consultant and had surgery. The human cost is extraordinary and we must ask why. We spend as much money as almost any other country on healthcare. In that case, the answer cannot be that we do not spend enough money.

The capacity review done by PA Consulting for the Department of Health shows that the average age in Ireland is considerably lower than in most other countries and we should, therefore, need considerably less healthcare assets than most other countries. It also shows we have roughly the same number of general practitioners, acute beds, nurses and doctors as other countries. What the data show us is that we spend more money than almost any other country on healthcare; we have approximately the same amount of healthcare assets as other countries; we should need fewer healthcare assets because we are younger; and yet we have some of the worst waiting lists in Europe. In fact, a recent pan-European report showed that the Government waiting time targets of 18 months, if met, which the Government cannot do, would give us the worst waiting times in Europe. That does not make sense. If we spend more money than other people, we should need fewer healthcare assets than other people. We have as many healthcare assets as other people and yet people are waiting in agony in circumstances which do not pertain in other countries. Why is that happening here? What are we doing so terribly badly, which other countries have sorted out, that is leading to this pain and suffering all over the country?