Over 200,000 children are on waiting lists for health care services and more than one-in-four are waiting for longer than a year.
It has also emerged that there are massive variations depending on where youngsters live, with some of the more affluent areas having zero waiting lists.
North Dublin has the highest waiting lists in the country with 2,400 children in the queue.
Statistics obtained by Fianna Fáil’s health spokesman Stephen Donnelly show the 117,000 children were waiting for hospital treatment.
The number waiting for primary adds another 90,000 children to existing lists, bringing the overall number to 214,737.
Deputy Donnelly said that many children are waiting for years, often for primary care supports such as speech and language therapy.
Others are languishing on lists for critical operations for conditions like scoliosis - which is an agonising curvature of the spine.
Deputy Donnelly said: “More and more parents have been contacting me about the inability to get care for their children.
“This includes very sick children in need of urgent surgery. It includes special needs children in urgent need of therapeutic supports like speech and language and occupational therapy.
“It includes children waiting for psychology, for diagnostic scans, and much more.
“I wanted to get a full picture of how bad things have got, and the results are shocking....215,000 children are waiting.
“Many are in pain, many are deteriorating while they wait. This is a damning indictment of this government’s failures in healthcare. It is a dark stain on our country that this is happening.”
While waiting lists in north Dublin are the highest in the country, just 10 children are on a waiting list for speech and language therapy in Dún Laoghaire and zero in Dublin South East.
There are also more than 7,000 children and teenagers waiting to see a psychologist, jumping by almost a fifth in the last twelve months.
Deputy Donnelly, who obtained the figures through parliamentary questions, said the situation might be a lot worse as not all hospitals release their full waiting lists.
He added: “This figure understates the full extent of the problem – many hospitals don’t report waiting lists for different age groups, diagnostics waiting lists are not reported by age, and the figures don’t include a huge number of children waiting for oral health preventative interventions in primary schools.
“A billion euro overspend on a children’s hospital that only adds a handful of extra beds for children is about the extent of the government’s work.
"These children and their families need solutions, and they need them now.”
