Hospital Waiting Lists
Dail Éireann — 2024-02-29
============================================================

Stephen Donnelly (FF), Wicklow

These issues were raised with me by patient advocacy groups, and I took them very seriously. On the back of that, I spoke directly with front-line clinicians involved in providing paediatric orthopaedic services. I asked them whether they felt they got dedicated beds, dedicated theatre space and priority access to MRI, theatre, etc. The answer I received was that they did not. I have therefore taken the unprecedented step, which I have never had to do before, of instructing the HSE to send in its internal audit team.
We need to wait to see what it comes back with but I would like an answer very quickly. This is not going to be a piece of work lasting several months. It is a fairly discrete piece of work that asks where this money was spent. Let us not prejudge it but if it is the case that there was a material allocation outside of the intended Government purpose, and the purpose of this Oireachtas which votes through the budgets, that will be a very serious matter.

---

Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted.

Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2024-02-29/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:52:44+00:00
Sitting date: 2024-02-29