Jim Daly (Cork South West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I note the sincerity and passion of the Deputy, who is noted for that in any of his presentations in this Chamber and in any other fora where I have had pleasure of working with him. To put this in context, a national audiology group was established in 2011 and one of its recommendations was that a national clinical lead be appointed. Subsequent to the recommendation, a national clinical lead for all audiology services was appointed, and in 2015, that national clinical lead carried out a routine review of a series of cases, something that is done periodically. Concerns arose during that routine review which led to this very specific look-back, which covered all the cases from 2011 to 2015.

The Deputy's community healthcare organisation, CHO, area was one of two CHO areas that had to outsource work to external staff due to the lack of available staff expertise within the CHO area. It was a routine review, like others carried out periodically in all services. There will be such situations, given 110,000 people are working in the HSE. Unless we robotise it and have procedures carried out by robots, there will always be error, which is a fact of life where human beings are involved. It is important that the HSE continues to carry out all of these routine reviews and reacts to any red flag that is raised, as it did in this case. I am not here to defend anybody, just to explain the situation. The HSE had a proper look-back for the cases from 2011 to 2015 and it identified these anomalies. As the Deputy knows, 990 children were called back and some were deemed to have issues arising. All of those children are either getting care at present or have received the care they need.

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