A GOVERNMENT MINISTER has said that the long waiting times for children to access vital scoliosis surgery is “not acceptable”.

Speaking in the Dáil, Minister for Health Promotion Marcella Corcoran-Kennedy said that while “every effort is being made to ensure patients get their surgery”, the issue of staff recruitment, particularly nursing, posed a major challenge.

Fianna Fáil TD Billy Kelleher raised the issue, highlighting the plight of children who are forced to wait up to a year and a half for essential surgery for the degenerative spinal disease.

“This cannot be allowed to continue,” Kelleher said.

In response, Corcoran-Kennedy reiterated the funding commitments of almost €1 million this year to address the orthopaedic service needs at Our Lady’s Children’s Hospital in Crumlin.

She also pointed to the HSE’s Winter Initiative Plan, which will see €2 million spent on providing surgery to treat 39 adolescent patients on the Tallaght waiting list and an additional 15 paediatric patients by the end of this year.

• More on this story: ‘This is a huge scandal’ – Children with scoliosis deteriorating as waiting lists worsen >

While a new orthopaedic theatre in Crumlin was completed in June 2015, the opening has been delayed on several occasions.

“This new facility will provide for additional scoliosis activity in 2017,” she said. “But this is dependent on the recruitment of additional nurses.”

Every effort was being made to hire the required number of nurses, with Corcoran-Kennedy saying that “every recruitment route is being exhausted”, including hiring from abroad.

Kelleher criticised the recruitment process as “very slow” and said the issue needed to be “revisited urgently.”

Parents and advocacy groups have also urged the Government to take action on the issue.

Read: ‘They spend their childhoods on waiting lists’: The painful reality for children with scoliosis >

Read: ‘I fear it’s going to take a child to die before they act’ >