550 Children Waiting For Treatment At Tullamore Hospital

By Justin Kelly

Laois/Offaly TD Barry Cowen has condemned figures revealed to him by the Minister for Health Leo Varadkar, indicating that over 550 children are currently waiting for treatment at Midland Regional Hospital, Tullamore. In a statement this morning, Cowen said that 305 of the 550 children have been waiting longer than the department’s target wait time of 20 weeks.

“Figures released to me by the Minister for Health show that a total of 305 children are waiting for in-patient treatment and 246 patients are waiting for day-care procedures at the Midland Regional Hospital Tullamore,” Cowen commented. Almost 25 of those have been waiting longer than 12 months, more than double the targeted wait time.

Figures released in a report by the Department of Health in December revealed that 60,000 people, including 5,500 children were waiting for outpatient treatment nationwide. The report also showed that the number waiting beyond the HSE target of no longer than eight months for an adult and 20 weeks for a child has been increasing. Following the report, Minister Varadkar extended target times, and has said that some of these waiting list figures would improve as a result.

“The Minister for Health has assured me that targeting 'long waiters' for treatment is a key priority for him in the department and says rigorous waiting list management is critical to success,” Cowen said in a statement on the issue.

Cowen also commented on the number of children waiting for treatment at Tullamore Hospital: “These figures are extremely worrying and a shocking indictment of the government’s health agenda over the last four years. The Government has fundamentally failed to bring about the necessary reforms and put in place adequate resources to ensure children in need of serious medical treatment or operations can be treated in a timely manner.”

This information comes just weeks after A&E departments across the country were overrun, leaving many patients on trolleys, sparking widespread public outrage. Minister Varadkar had to return from a holiday to address the issues facing his department. At its worst, there were over 600 patients waiting on trolleys across the country, and it was revealed recently that the numbers waiting on trolleys in A&E departments in January 2015 marked a 9% increase from the same month in 2014.


Meanwhile, Minister Varadkar has revealed that 98,237 more patients were seen at outpatient departments between January and November last year than over the same period the previous year. Barry Cowen remains unhappy with the Minister’s handling of outpatient care.

Cowen said: “Unfortunately what we have seen from Minister Varadkar to date is a lot of comment and analysis of the problems facing the health service and a complete denial of the fact that it’s the government’s decisions over the last four years that have helped create a lot of the problems patients are facing.”