Thomas Byrne (Meath East, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I refer to page 60 of the programme for Government which addresses waiting lists for hospital procedures. While I do not expect the Taoiseach to answer about a specific case, I have a constituent who has been given an MRI appointment for May 2019. Is that acceptable in the Government's opinion? Is there anything it can do for this constituent and many others who have received similar appointments? I have another constituent who has been waiting for over a year for an angiogram and suffered a serious heart attack while on the waiting list. It is surely unacceptable for this to be the case. Surely somebody in government needs to rattle a few cages in the HSE to make appointments happen? The constituent who is waiting for an MRI scan has Parkinson's disease and, as I understand it, the MRI scan is needed to further assess him. He is an elderly man who needs the appointment. It is unacceptable to leave people like him languishing on waiting lists.

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