Mr. Brendan Lennon:

There is a separate service in the sense that paediatric audiologists in the HSE have higher levels of qualifications and they see the children. Since the 2011 report, one of the good things that happened, mainly through our efforts at the time, is that newborn hearing screening has been introduced. That means all newborn children are screened for hearing loss at birth and are identified quite early, within the first couple of weeks in life, and fitted with appropriate hearing aids, if that is appropriate, in a very timely fashion. That works really well and is an advance since 2011. As for the 10,000 adults on the waiting list, virtually all have a hearing loss. Of the 10,000 children, the vast majority do not but they may have been referred because they have temporary hearing loss or they have concentration issues in school, etc. Around 5% of those children do have a persistent and problematic hearing loss. The Deputy is right; they are going about their business as best they can day to day but they are missing out on communication, language learning and all of that, at home, in school and so on. It is very frustrating from our perspective. I looked it up and in 2022, I could find three High Court cases where awards were made for delayed or missed diagnosis of audiology issues and hearing loss. Those three cases alone cost €1.3 million. This is why we need to deal with the waiting lists. It is, to use the Deputy’s phrase, a no-brainer: sort out the procurement pathway and reduce the waiting lists. The HSE has the capacity to address the day-to-day need if it could only catch up.