Mental handicap: Waiting lists stand at 2,500 for day or residential care. This does not include almost 1,000 people "inappropriately placed" in psychiatric hospitals.

Children: Hundreds of suspected cases of child abuse and neglect reported to the Eastern Health board are not being investigated for months because of lack of resources.

General surgery: Number of adults waiting for general surgery for longer than one year increased by almost 50 per cent at the end of 1997.

Plastic Surgery: Two thirds of those needing surgery have been waiting for more than a year.

Rehabilitation: Chronic lack of beds for people who have had strokes, heart attacks, and neurological diseases who are in need of physiotherapy, occupational and speech therapy. "I see people who would benefit hugely but I can't take them," says Dr Bernard Walsh, consultant geriatrician at St James's Hospital.

Cystic Fibrosis: More than 300 people with this disease of the lungs are in need of physiotherapy and out-reach nursing, particularly those at terminal stages of the lung disease.

Dialysis: More than 20 people with kidney failure in the Midlands Health Board area are without a regional dialysis centre.

Diabetes: Ten per cent of money spent on treating people with illnesses is as a result of endstate diabetes. Currently there is no national screening for the disease which, if introduced, would ultimately save money, according to the Diabetic Federation of Ireland.

Schizophrenia: No investment in residential care for schizophrenics who have been living at home but whose parents are now elderly. According to Schizophrenia Ireland, no facilities have been built for these people and several hundred are now in need of care.