More than 970 are waiting for genetic counselling services

A spokesperson for the Children’s Hospital Group said these figures would be “85 per cent adults”.

The National Centre for Medical Genetics (NCMG) is based at OL­CHC and provides a service to both adults and children.

The figure as of mid-April showed a total of 973 people on the waiting list for OLCHC genetic counsellors.

Some 339 were on the waiting list for less than three months, a fur­ther 239 for between three and six months, with 160 patients waiting between six and nine months.

Some 47 patients were waiting between 15 and 18 months, with a further 50 waiting for more than 18 months.

The spokesperson noted that the figures supplied to MI included “pre-scheduled appointments with­in the next six weeks”.

Concerns over the lack of genetic counselling services in Ireland were raised at a conference on rare dis­eases held in Dublin in February.

According to the website of the NCMG, genetic counsellors are “ex­perienced practitioners with a back­ground in nursing or a science de­gree and a professional qualification in genetic counselling.

“Genetic counsellors see families where the diagnosis is known, to take patients through predictive testing, discuss recurrence risks if applicable and discuss preventative options.”

According to the World Health Or­ganisation (WHO), genetic counsel­ling is the process by which knowl­edge about the genetic aspects of ill­nesses is shared, by trained profes­sionals, with those at an increased risk of having a heritable disorder or of passing it to unborn offspring.