Disability waiting lists: What kind of a country is this?

THE thousands of committed staff working in our health service must be almost inured to the never-ending cascade of damaging reports. The Grace scandal, and suggestions that efforts were made to bury evidence around the neglect suffered by that powerless woman, may be a low point but this morning another story points to the dysfunction in our health service. This story is another saga of scarce resources or misused resources but that cannot be an excuse.

Despite gallant efforts to reduce waiting times, the number of children waiting longer than the recommended three-month period for disability assessments has risen to almost 4,000. This is an increase of 23% between October and December last year when there were 3,960 children — 1,732 of these in the Cork/Kerry region — waiting.

Minister of state for disabilities Finian McGrath acknowledges that this is unacceptable and promised to concentrate on cutting waiting time. Fine talk indeed but fine talk, butter, and parsnips, etc ... Staff shortages and misallocation are at the root of this issue and it is necessary to recruit more if the resources can be found to do that.

One of the contenders to succeed Enda Kenny as leader of Fine Gael — if he lives long enough — Leo Varadkar, has suggested his party needs to consider what kind of a country we want to build, how we want to treat citizens. This report confirms once again that we all need to have that discussion.