ALMOST 10,000 children have been left on waiting lists for up to a year in the Mid West for essential treatments, therapies, and assessments – 4,313 of them in Limerick alone.
Almost 1,000 of these children are aged under five years.
The overall figure is, in reality, even higher as the former CHO3 HSE region tallies East Limerick and North Tipperary as one area, meaning East Limerick figures are not included in the general Limerick count.
9,512 children under the age of 18 were either waiting for a first assessment, an appointment, or treatment in the Mid West in July of this year, according to official HSE figures.
Of that number, 4,313 are in Limerick, and 927 are aged younger than five years.
The picture for speech and language services is even more worrying, with waiting lists showing 3,396 children across the Mid West waiting up to two years – 1,257 of them in Limerick.
Limerick Labour Party councillor Conor Sheehan, who was given the figures on foot of a parliamentary question posed by his party, said that “the operation of early intervention is not an office plaything to have between the HSE and the government”.
“The collateral damage is the families of the children awaiting therapies across the Mid West. These waiting list figures show, once more, a sector in total crisis.
“From the lack of therapy being offered to families awaiting a first time intervention and the retention and recruitment chaos that frontline workers are dealing with on a daily basis, it is now time for the government to step in at the highest level.”
Cllr Sheehan said the figures were a “direct result of the recruitment embargo imposed on the HSE by government”.
“We have far too many unfilled posts here in the Mid West and government must lift the recruitment embargo completely and speed up the recruitment and retention of clinicians.
“There are far too many parents in the Mid West at breaking point, literally going around in circles in search of essential therapies for their children.”
Figures across the Mid West show 889 children – 454 of them in Limerick – waiting for audiology treatment.
641 are waiting for treatment in dietetics (525 in Limerick), 979 for opthalmology treatment (465 in Limerick), and 581 Mid West children waiting for physiotherapy treatment (329 in Limerick).
979 children in the Mid West are waiting for occupational therapy assessments (465 in Limerick).
Podiatry lists have 134 children (57in Limerick) across the Mid West awaiting treatment, while 1,007 are waiting for treatment with a psychologist (436 in Limerick).
Speech and language waiting lists are split into three groups, those waiting for an initial assessment, those waiting for initial treatment, and those waiting for further treatments.
These waiting lists include 1,911 waiting for initial assessment (739 in Limerick), 337 waiting for initial treatment (73), and 1,148 waiting for further treatments (445)
Some children on the speech and language waiting lists have been waiting for up to two years.
230 children across the region under five have been waiting for dietetic treatment, numbered among 523 children in Limerick and 641 across the Mid West.
No response was available from the HSE at the time of going to print.
