A Dublin mam has branded the health service l an 'absolute disgrace' after a ten hour wait in A&E.
Mother-of-five Lesley Anne Clare has been campaigning for children's healthcare for a long time.
Two of her children have cerebral palsy, and she has been to hospital a lot since having her first child 12 years ago.
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And she says the health service today is the "worst" she has ever seen.
Lesley's daughter Amily was in agony with abdominal pains, and her mother thought she had a ruptured appendix.
And she spent ten hours waiting in Temple Street Children's Hospital's A&E before not even getting a resolution to their problem, which Lesley dubbed "an absolute disgrace".
"I had been there from 8.20am on Saturday morning and it was just after 7.00pm when I got out of the hospital," Lesley told Dublin Live.
"My daughter had abdominal pain and we went in, and it was six hours before we saw the actual doctor.
"Then, of course, she had to get bloods done, and then she had to see a surgeon.
"You'd think they would do bloods when you first go in - instead of waiting to have to see a doctor and then doing the bloods."
Lesley slammed the emergency department for making sick and in pain children wait an average of six hours before being treated.
She said: "In an emergency hospital for children, six hours is not good enough - especially then if you have to wait another three or four hours for something else.
"There were kids in and out of there with different injuries but one child in particular, a little boy around the age of four, was holding up his hand for five hours with a broken wrist.
"Then the child had to fast for another two hours before they could put him under a local anaesthetic to manipulate his wrist back into place.
"His parents were going absolutely nuts."
Lesley said the room they were waiting in was unventilated and uncomfortable.
She said: "They are in a tiny little room with no ventilation.
"The kids are starving. They are telling the kids not to have any food because blah, blah, blah, and they are eating out of the vending machine which costs you a fortune.
"The kids are running around in a little small room and the heat on Saturday - there was no windows in the room."
"It has to have been the worst I have seen the system in all my twelve years as a mother. And I have been in and out of Temple Street a lot with my children."
She added: "It is an all time low for our health system - and it has always been crap in my opinion".
Children's Health Ireland said they cannot comment on specific incidents due to patient confidentiality.
But they did apologise, and said they hoped to restore their services to full efficiency once "the incidence of Covid-19 reduces in the community".
A spokeswoman said: "We are sorry that we cannot provide better timely access to non-urgent treatment, primarily because of COVID-19.
"CHI is experiencing a significant impact of increased incidences of Covid-19 on our staffing across our services.
"This is coupled with continued high numbers of patients presenting to our ED’s in Crumlin, Temple Street and Tallaght and our Urgent Care Centre in Connolly, Blanchardstown."
She added: "We hope this is temporary and will resolve when the incidence of Covid-19 reduces in the community."
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