The Children's Rights Alliance has called on the Government to end healthcare waiting lists for children.
In a letter to the Minister for Finance, Mr McCreevy, the alliance said the Government should remember Ireland's obligations under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child when determining the level of financial support to be given to the health services. The convention, which Ireland ratified in 1992, recognised children's rights of access to health services and called on governments to ensure no child was deprived of that right.
It also, the alliance added, obliged states to respect children's rights without discrimination of any kind and to ensure to the maximum extent possible the survival and development of all children.
The alliance represents 67 non-governmental organisations dealing with the rights of children in Ireland.
Its chief executive, Mr Raymond Dooley, said recently-published statistics showed that 75 per cent of children on waiting lists for public hospital care had been there for six months.
"Waiting lists for outpatient care and specialised services run much longer. Services are often inaccessible for children with physical disabilities or simply unavailable for children with intellectual disabilities.
"More than 30,000 children face delays of up to six years for orthodontic services. Poverty continues to be a determinant of ill health for children and young people.
"A two-tier system of healthcare continues to discriminate against children by providing or denying access to care, not on the basis of need but on grounds of ability to pay.".
Mr Dooley said those were "only some of the most egregious examples of how the provision of health services currently violates, in a routine and systematic manner, the right of children in Ireland to healthcare.
"How can we continue to permit such injustices to persist? Explanations and defences of these practices citing the fiscal incapacity of the State, inadequate as they were in the past, are clearly no longer relevant today."
He urged the Minister to give his full support to ensure that all children, without regard to financial status, race, cultural background or disability, were able to enjoy their right to the highest standard of healthcare.