‘We are running the risk of condemning future generations to the same poor health outcomes as their parents, perpetuating the same inequalities that have sadly been allowed to fester in Irish society for far too long’ - Dr Anne Dee speaking at IMO’s ‘Health on the Margins’ conference in Limerick

Monday November 10, 2025. The President of the Irish Medical Organisation (IMO) has warned that more needs to be done to address health inequalities from early childhood, noting that a failure to properly focus on early intervention and eradicate existing waiting lists for children will eventually lead to immense – and avoidable – pressure on the health system.

Dr Anne Dee, who is also a public health consultant, was speaking at the IMO’s ‘Health on the Margins’ conference, which took place on Saturday in Limerick.

Dr Dee warned that, more than ever before, an Irish person’s health outcomes were largely dictated by their housing quality, educational and work opportunities, and their lived environment.

She said: “By not doing enough to mitigate the risks of health inequality from birth, we are running the risk of condemning future generations to the same poor health outcomes as their parents, perpetuating the same inequalities that have sadly been allowed to fester in Irish society for far too long.

“We need to see a whole-of-Government approach to the problem of children at risk from before they are born, identifying young families and pregnant mothers who are at risk, supporting these families to help address the risks in a holistic way, and working with key stakeholders across all the domains of society towards redressing the imbalance.

Dr Dee added: “More resourcing and staffing are urgently needed in the health service to cater for the increasingly complex needs of a fast-growing and ageing population living in deprivation, where ageing and frailty occur at a much younger age than their affluent counterparts. But there are other ways we can mitigate this demand and ease the pressure on the system, which is overloaded at present. A comprehensive, social determinants of health-based approach is needed to help improve the poor health outcomes which are the reality for far too many people in this country.

 “If we do not adequately develop a far-reaching plan to address this problem and focus especially on early intervention, then we will only be passing a bigger issue on to future generations and it will be harder to tackle.