Ms Eil?sh Hardiman:

I will start by saying that children safety and getting the children treated competently with quality care is central to what we do. There are two elements to what the Deputy raised. One is on the procedure, which I will take separately, and the other relates to the children who are involved in the external reviews. Dr. Goldman might come in on that.

The Deputy is absolutely right. The implantation of non-medical-grade devices should not happen. It cannot be approved by anyone in Children’s Health Ireland. It cannot be approved by the competent authority, the Health Products Regulatory Authority, HPRA, because one cannot and should not implant non-medical-grade devices into patients.

That matter is under investigation at the moment. It is a full, end-to-end investigation taking into account the custody of these springs right through the organisation. I do not want to assume the outcomes of that investigation, but we will fully support it to answer those questions. I can give assurance, though, that since then we have increased awareness around this to make sure that everybody is aware of it. We have looked at our controls and talked to our teams to ensure that it does not happen again.

As regards the employer, and as an employer, I am bound by the individual employee in that I cannot get into certain matters here because of due process and the HR processes in place. There are two elements of controls around this. There are the employer controls but also there is the professional accountability in respect of a surgeon. I think Ms Kelly might speak to that.