Dr. Conall O'Seaghdha:

I am grateful for the opportunity to contribute to this important Oireachtas hearing on organ tourism, forced organ harvesting and trafficking in human organs. I am the medical director of the National Kidney Transplant Service in Ireland. My clinical specialty is transplant nephrologist, which is a medical consultant with expertise in kidney transplantation. All kidney transplantation in the Republic of Ireland is performed by the National Kidney Transplant Service, based in Beaumont Hospital, where I work. Last year, 172 kidney transplants were performed in the Republic of Ireland, comprising 50 living donor kidney transplants and 122 deceased donor transplants. As of the beginning of last month, there were 439 people on the kidney transplant waiting list in the Republic of Ireland, with a further 18 on the kidney-pancreas or heart-kidney waiting lists and an additional 87 people temporarily suspended from the waiting list for clinical or personal reasons. In total, there are 544 on the waiting list.

Due to welcome improvements in road safety and neurosurgical care, the rate of deceased organ donation has been steadily decreasing. The average waiting time for a deceased donor kidney transplant is currently 35 months. This datum is very skewed, however. Some patients on the list have been waiting over ten years, with little prospect of receiving suitable kidneys. The median waiting time, or the time by which half of the people on the waiting list have a transplant, is currently 19 months, which again underscores the skewed nature of the data.

While we have no official data on transplant tourism from Ireland, I can confirm there have been cases where patients resident in Ireland underwent kidney transplantations foreign countries and returned to Ireland for their post-transplant care. For the most part, these were patients born outside Ireland who travelled to their region of ethnicity for transplants and returned to Ireland for care afterwards. We are aware, however, of at least one case of an Irish citizen having engaged in transplant tourism also.

I wish to add my voice to those condemning the practice of transplant tourism globally and, in particular, I call for an end to the obscene practice of live organ harvesting in China.