Tom Clonan (Independent)

I thank the witnesses for attending. I echo what my colleagues said. Staff in the HSE work very hard in very difficult circumstances. The Department of Health gets away with murder on a daily basis. I find that a rhetorical device is used that everything is the fault of the HSE, but there are wider systemic and political causes. Anything I say this morning is not meant with disrespect or any hostility. It is simply a reflection that there is a number of very pressing concerns related to outsourcing and insourcing.

Last week, CHI appeared before the committee. Dr. Henry sat through that session. I think I even apologised to him at the end. His position was unenviable to hear about all the rabbits that were pulled out of the hat at the meeting. I have had sight of the reports that CHI is not making available. They are an appalling vista. One of my colleagues said it was not clear which hospital the dysfunction was. There is a broken, toxic culture with abhorrent work practices on all three sites.

A narrative has been pushed by the management, the board and the senior leadership at CHI that this is an issue regarding rogue consultants. That is not the case. The so-called rogue consultants are merely a symptom of the systemic failures of the board and the senior leadership team. That point is reiterated continuously throughout the reports by their authors. In the conclusions and executive summaries, the authors point to the fact that the senior leadership team and the board are not fit for purpose and are not capable of not only meeting the challenges posed by the scoliosis and urology waiting lists, but are not fit to oversee and manage the migration of the three current children's hospital sites to CHI.

I will try to bundle my questions. First, based on what Dr. Henry heard last week and what is in the reports, does he have confidence in the board and senior leadership team of CHI to oversee, manage and drive the migration of services to the new children's hospital campus? Unfortunately, I was the last speaker at the meeting and did not have an opportunity to ask another question, but I asked the chief medical officer of CHI about the urology waiting lists and the fact that a number of young male and female teenagers have become infertile and been de facto sterilised by a failure to intervene with routine surgical interventions. I asked Dr. Goldman how many of those children and teenagers had become infertile. He said it was "impossible" to know. That is a huge red flag. Even as a layperson, I am au fait with the concept of medical records. It is not a huge cohort of people. I could do a desktop exercise. I know this as a layperson that exactly how many people have become infertile in an afternoon. I am appalled by that response from the CHI's chief medical officer that it was "impossible" to know. Do the witnesses share my concern in that regard?

I will be as quick as I can because i am conscious of the time. Since last week's meeting, I have been contacted by many parents of children on the urology waiting list who have told me their children have become infertile. These are children whose little penises have not developed properly and young girls whose reproductive organs have not developed properly and who have become incontinent. They have an increased risk of bladder, bowel and testicular cancers.

I got a phone call. I will protect this person's identity and not say whether they are a male or female. I was contacted by a very high-profile person who is a household name in this country and whose child has also had these concerns on the urology waiting list. When that high-profile person who is sufficiently educated and articulate enough to advocate for his or her child asked for his or her child's medical records in order to get a second opinion elsewhere, he or she was told that he or she was not entitled to his or her child's medical records. As the report states, this is a toxic workplace culture with abhorrent practices. I have raised these issues in the Seanad again and again, including well over a year ago with the previous Minister. The previous Minister refused to attend those Commencement matters debates, but they were widely reported in the national media.

With regard to scoliosis, Ms Brady recently responded to a parent with a letter, which states:

Since 2017, the NTPF has not received funding to outsource scoliosis procedures. Nor have we received funding to support public hospitals to undertake additional scoliosis procedures in-house or through their own outsourcing initiatives. The NTPF has not tendered for scoliosis procedures to our panel of private hospitals under outsourcing initiatives and we have never entered into any agreement with private hospitals to perform scoliosis procedures under an outsourcing arrangement.

That disclosure is really helpful. As parents, we were amazed at these kinds of responses-----