Seán Crowe (Dublin South West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The witnesses' opening statement stated that respondents found it difficult to see their patients struggle to access the care that they needed. There is a quote where Doctor 7 said: “I find myself apologising to patients on behalf of the system for their poor care. It’s draining.” Doctor 5 said: “What keeps me up at night is ... people not having access to timely care.” This is a follow-on from Deputy Durkan's question. We had doctors before this committee who were dealing with the issue of scoliosis and one of the people who came in made that point about the difficulty of trying to explain to families whose child is in severe pain that there is a queue and a waiting list and there is no access to care for that child. The point made at that meeting was if it is the best use of a consultant to deal with families on a daily basis given the amount of time it takes to explain to those families that within the current system there is not space for resolving their child's condition. Dr. Byrne spoke of frustration and that is clearly something that keeps people up at night. They are dealing face-to-face with those families and those children on a personal basis and that has an impact and it is hard to walk away from and switch off from after work.