Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome our witnesses and the supporters and families who have been affected. We have to extend our sincere sympathy to the patients who were affected and to the families who are bereaved. Far too often, we find ourselves at this juncture, which is particularly sad when the lives of children are affected. I do not wish to blame anyone. I want to be factual about this. It is nobody’s fault but if the system is wrong it needs to be rectified. As a procedure was followed that was not approved, which was not EU-approved or approved by anyone in the hospital, what happens in such a case? What do we do? We are a committee. Everyone has raised this same question repeatedly, month after month, week after week, but we got no information. There was no response from various people from the HSE, people involved with various procedures and people who claimed that whatever could be done was being done to overhaul the waiting lists. We have also had the problem of things that should not have happened in the adult area over the years. These have been numerous and I will not go into them; we all know what they were. Public confidence in the system has been shaken. Public confidence in this case has been particularly shaken by virtue of the veil of silence. We raised numerous questions in the Dáil and did so here to the relevant people who were before the committee and we got no answers.

One thing has to change first. I will not attribute blame to any one individual. I have always strongly supported children’s health in this committee and outside. I was a member of a health board previously. What I will say is what has been disclosed to us is not good enough. These kinds of things do not happen to that extent. In the best run businesses, things occasionally go wrong and cannot be averted. However, this continued for quite a long time and in one case cost the life of a child. I would ask everyone for a second to reflect on how the child depends entirely on those in their environment, those in their range of vision; their parents, siblings and all those who support them in their difficulty. They suffer from acute pain which they hope will be averted as soon as possible when they get this magic formula that parents are promising to them. And what do we get? More pain. We get indecision and the use of procedures that were not permitted in this country. Compare that with the situation in recent years where medicines were tested at EU level and approved. What do we do in this country? We have them tested again and delay the procedure by a long time. That is not relevant in this particular case but it is a fact. That should not happen. Patients are in the front row, and I know the practitioners are too, but it is the families and the child himself or herself, waiting for this magic formula to happen and then suddenly it does not happen. These cases were brought back again and again for corrective surgery. That should not happen either. If the procedures were approved, who approved them? Is the hospital telling us that, for example, somebody decided, without reference to anybody to proceed in a particular fashion? How could that happen? Why could it happen? Is it likely to happen again where someone decides to proceed in a fashion regardless and that they do not need EU approval at all and nor do they need national health service approval and that they will carry out experimental medicine? This is no place for that. This is too sensitive a subject for that. I strongly urge someone to tell us on what basis the procedure was allowed proceed and by whom.