Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

Before the Christmas recess, I brought to the attention of the Taoiseach the very distressing case of a young child aged nine years who has scoliosis. Not only does she have scoliosis, she also has severe intellectual disabilities. I received some letters from the Taoiseach's office and from the Minister for Health, who spoke to me personally. He reassured me that, at the outside, by now the child would have received the urgently-needed operation. As the Taoiseach can imagine, the child's mother is in touch with the hospital all the time but she and her daughter have simply been told to wait and wait. The operation now seems to have been put back well back into the next couple of months. We were sure it would have been performed by now. I have not raised the matter with the Taoiseach again since then.

I cannot understand a system that keeps a child of nine years with a well-diagnosed condition and exceptional other difficulties and issues waiting. Notwithstanding all the funding that was provided to renew the operating theatre at the hospital in Crumlin during our period in government – a matter on which we all strongly agreed and which we supported – it seems that the hospital is now down to performing one operation per week. That is unbelievable. Will the Taoiseach give us an update on what is happening? Children are in pain and their families are experiencing some level of desperation.

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