In Budget 2025, a record €25.8 Billion spend was allocated from public funds for healthcare, though the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council indicated in September that the by-now-customary overruns would likely add another 5.8% to that spend, bringing the total funding to more than €27 Billion. (That’s €27 million million, by the way, something that’s not news to anyone but we might need a reminder from time to time of just how enormous the spend is.)
It is a colossal amount of money, and Ireland is a comparatively high spender internationally, ranking 6th highest amongst OECD countries for per capita consumption at $7,813 per capita, significantly above the OECD average of $5,967. The OECD also notes that 77% of all expenditure on health comes from public funds, with the remaining 23% funded by private sources because of a “high uptake of voluntary private insurance”.
However, not to be deterred by revelations of inefficiencies and mismanagement, the government decided to up the amount of public funds committed for Health in 2026, making the budget for the year a whopping €27.4 Billion. Warnings from the Fiscal Council continue to fall on deaf ears, and no-one ever seems to be held accountable for the chaos that seems to be so often present in a system that is soaking up that much public cash.
Nowhere is the horrendous effects of the many failings of the HSE more evident than in the truly dreadful, shameful way in which children with scoliosis and their families have been treated. A record €27 Billion budgeted for health, yet parents of very sick children are being forced to crowdfund in desperation as they watch their children suffer.
Mairín Nolan from Carlow is one of many parents who, in desperation, turn to the kindness of others to help their children when they have been failed by the State. Despite the shocking familiarity of photos shared on social media of small children with twisted spines left languishing on waiting lists or unable to access care, the harrowing images of her beautiful daughter Roxanne show how distressing this reality is for families.
Mairín and her husband Declan Kelly says they must bring Roxanne back to Florida for urgent spinal surgery because the child’s scoliosis is worsening, and she cannot get treated in Ireland.
Roxanne, who is a twin and is seven-years-old, suffers from a debilitating condition called arthrogryposis, which has left her unable to stand or sit by herself. She has already undergone multiple surgeries in Florida after her parents contacted the Paley Orthopaedic & Spine Institute in Florida.
Her parents raised €120,000 on GoFundMe to pay for a full MRI of her spine, lower spine surgery, hip surgery on both hips, femur surgery and knee surgery, as well as five-days-a-week rehabilitation over two months, the family told the Independent.
Consultants in Ireland are unwilling to operate on the little girl, Ms Nolan said. She said Roxanne’s scoliosis had been misdiagnosed in Ireland and that her daughter had been on a waiting list for surgery for four years but had been removed “without explanation”.
Soft-spoken as Mairín Nolan is in the video above, you can feel the upset and the frustration in her statement that “Ireland offered no care, no communication, and no help”. Parents of children with scoliosis have spoken repeatedly about that frustration – about the failure of the relevant authorities to met with them, to talk to them. They feel shut out even as they watch their children suffer. Their pleas for meetings with successive ministers too-often fell on deaf ears.
It is almost two years since advocate Úna Keightley told me that parents believe that neither Children’s Health Ireland nor the government were listening to them – and that parents were shocked to find that they had been muted on a CHI Family Forum on Zoom – supposedly a consultation with the families of children with scoliosis and spina bifida.
The situation is appalling, and yet it continues ad nauseum and children continue to suffer. Reviews and inquiries drag on and on, and in the meantime children like Roxanne Nolan are left waiting, and their treatment left unfunded.
Today it was reported that “525 scoliosis surgeries on children have been cancelled by Children’s Health Ireland (CHI) hospitals over the last four years” – and that the reasons include children getting sick, emergency cases taking priority, and intensive care unit beds not being available.
Children’s Health Ireland said that in the 525 cases cancelled between 2022-2025, the cases were replaced with another spinal patient in 277 instances.
Little wonder the Kelly family have been driven to seek help in Florida, but that has only made possible with the help of crowd-funding. This is deeply infuriating. We pay our taxes and fund the health service precisely so that children like Roxanne will get the help they need. That’s the social contract: the state takes a large chunk of our income – just as I’m sure they did for Roxanne’s parents – so that the most vulnerable, in particular, can be assisted.
For all the bluster at Cabinet and in the Dáil, the current Minister for Health, Jennifer Carroll Mac Neill has been accused “of sidelining families” in the inquiry into the treatment of children with scoliosis by CHI – with campaigners saying she “failed to keep promise to let parents and advocacy groups help shape the terms of reference”.
In fact. last week Elaine Kelly from the Scoliosis Awareness and Support Group said that parents on the Paediatric Spinal Taskforce that is tasked with bringing parents, doctors, CHI executives and officials from the Department of Health together fear it is to be disbanded. Are parents – the same people caring for their sick children every day while desperately turning to crowd-funding to enable surgeries – going to be further cut out and disrespected by the State?
I can’t be alone in wondering how the hell did we spent €27 Billion on health in 2025 yet still failed to cover the cost of surgery for this little girl. It is almost beyond belief.
The HSE and CHI won’t comment on individual cases, and that’s both correct and understandable. And there will always be disagreements amongst medical experts regarding the correct course of action in regard to an particular patient. But the attitude of CHI – and by extension the Department of Health and the government – is utterly inexplicable at times. Harvey Sherratt was also taken off a waiting list and his parents were not even informed. Funds earmarked for scoliosis surgeries were spent elsewhere. The situation is intolerable, yet we tolerate it.