Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael)

The Government does not like to be kept waiting but look at how the Government has kept people waiting. People with cancer or aneurysms must wait for surgery, brain surgeons wait for equipment that works, women who have been raped must wait days for a doctor to attend, the elderly must suffer and wait for the nursing home to be inspected and 3,000 children must wait four years for an assessment but not treatment. Last year 3,000 children waited in adult psychiatric institutions. Does the Taoiseach realise how much humanity and sanity is lost because so many people are forced to wait because of Government inaction?

Today, a little boy named Jordan Kelly is waiting. His parents, Sharon and Martin, say he is angry, aggressive and out of control. He has spoken of suicide. Sharon tried to get help for Jordan when he was three years old. He was placed on a three year waiting list and nobody called in three years. The Taoiseach knows the joy of being a parent and sometimes the pain of being a Dad. Yesterday Martin Kelly told "Prime Time Investigates" that it is as if their little boy is hanging over a cliff and they are trying to hang on to him. He is slipping and eventually they know he will go but they do not know how it will happen. What has the Taoiseach, on behalf of the Fianna Fáil-Progressive Democrats Government, done about this? We do not need the reflex response, the BSE response — billions expended or blame somebody else. That would be terrible; somebody should do something about it. That person is the Taoiseach, with his Minister for Health and Children and her Minister of State. Action has not been taken, despite being in power for ten years. In ten budgets there has been money to do so much, but in spending one has gone astray. Last week, in the Taoiseach's absence, we had a vision of a slumped Tánaiste who was unable to answer any question or utter the word "neurosurgery". I hope the Taoiseach will do better with respect to psychiatric and mental illness, and do what the Government has not been able to do in ten years. He might like to express his thoughts on the issue.

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