Waiting lists - O’Malley must explain or resign

Irish medical consultants are on some kind of ego trip, getting pleasure out of the suffering of people on waiting lists, because it makes them feel more powerful to have a hundred or 200 people on their list.

That was the message yesterday of Tim O’Malley, the Minister of State at the Department of Health and Children, with special responsibility for disability and mental health services. He was downplaying waiting lists.

One wonders if he was being particularly brave or spectacularly foolish? If any consultants have been deliberately building up waiting lists and thereby exploiting the suffering of people to use them as a stick to beat the Department of Health and the Health Service Executive, then Mr O’Malley should name and shame those people for trampling on their Hippocratic oath.