Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)

It was a sickening sight. This is the man who carried out numerous mutilations of women through unnecessary hysterectomies. The programme revealed he is implicated in the symphysiotomy scandal as well. This alone merits full inquiry.

I call on the Minister for Health and Children to act immediately to establish an inquiry into this scandal. It should be headed by a competent and independent figure from outside of the medical establishment. It is time for the Minister to stop shielding the medical establishment and start acting on behalf of our citizens who were victims of this barbaric practice.

I wish to quote in full and put on the record of the House an open letter to the Minister published today in The Irish Times.

Symphysiotomy is an 18th-century childbirth operation that effectively unhinges the pelvis by severing the pubic bones. The surgery was revived here in the mid-1940s for religious reasons and carried out, reportedly, without consent. More than 100 casualties survive today.

The Minister for Health has declined to accede to calls for an inquiry, most recently from the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health.

Her refusal rests on advice supplied by the Institute of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists. Wrongly, the institute has led successive Ministers to believe that symphysiotomy was done out of medical necessity, that the surgery was a norm for obstructed labour until 1960, that results were "excellent" and complications "rare".

Symphysiotomy was never a norm, however. Ireland is the only country in the developed world where symphysiotomy was widely practised during the 20th century.

More than 1,000 of these operations were performed here from 1944 to 1984.

The surgery left babies dead or damaged and mothers with genital and pelvic injuries, persistent wounds and other infections; and sexual, marital and family difficulties. Many report decades of depression, impaired mobility, incontinence and chronic pain.

Symphysiotomy was a blatant abuse of authority and of medicine, one that showed a callous and cavalier disregard for mothers and babies.

For the Minister to persist in refusing an independent inquiry into this mutilating operation is to make a mockery of patient safety and to deny these women justice.

Like other victims of institutional abuse, they, too, are entitled to truth, validation, redress and closure.

The letter was signed by a long list of people from a cross-section of roles in society but I ask the House to note that three of the Deputies present in the Chamber were signatories to this letter: I signed the letter as Sinn Féin spokesperson on health and children, as did Deputy Arthur Morgan, in whose constituency many of the victims reside and the Acting Chairman, Deputy Jan O'Sullivan.

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