James Browne (Wexford, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

It is clear our health system is broken, dysfunctional and, in parts, unethical. In an "RTE Investigates" programme this week, we saw children crying, women in undescribable pain and men talking about taking their own lives. People were and are angry, frustrated and upset and rightly so. Nobody who saw the programme would not have been deeply affected by what could be seen and heard.

We saw very real and visible examples of the physical and emotional pain being suffered by people and we also saw the effects on their families and friends who had to watch as this happened. We learned about the dishonesty in the waiting list process but the HSE is owned and funded by the same people on those waiting lists who are not getting the simple truth. They are being lied to about the lists; it is a lie of omission and a fear about telling the truth when there is a duty to do so. We learned there are two secret waiting lists that the public is not to know about and it took the "RTE Investigates" programme to discover them. How do we ever hope to resolve the dysfunctional health care system if we cannot get basic truths about numbers?

Confidence in the system has gone because time and again, our health system has proven to be dysfunctional and dishonest. There are a record 545,000 patients on the waiting lists for the end of the month and that does not include the planned procedure list of 60,930. Adding the published to the unpublished list, there are more than 630,000 people on the list or one in seven of the population is on a waiting list somewhere in the health care system. There are almost 100,000 people waiting for over a year for basic care. We have record waiting lists, secret waiting lists and record numbers on trolleys. We were told this week that insufficient funds are available to "fully proceed", as the HSE has stated, with the children's hospital. We have the worst record of 36 countries for access to health care. We have theatres ready for operations that cannot perform them because the HSE will not hire a theatre nurse or pay for implements. We are losing millions of euro to save pennies.

There is more to this. As Senator Joan Freeman ably pointed out in the Seanad on Tuesday, there has not even been mention of those children on the mental health waiting lists. In a two-tier health system, mental health is in the basement. Children often wait over a year or sometimes two years just to be assessed at the most formative time of their lives. In one case in Wexford, a three-year-old waited 18 months to be seen by a psychologist, only to be told after that time that the HSE does not cover mental distress arising from bereavement involving a family member as, effectively, there is no box to tick. The long waiting lists in mental health for children are just as critical as those for physical health and should not be forgotten. The people are relying on the Minister to intervene and take steps. I urge him to do so.

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