Duncan Smith (Dublin Fingal, Labour) | Oireachtas source

None of us who watched the "RTÉ Investigates" programme on Tuesday night could not but be moved by the scandalous effect on the 18 families the organs of whose poor children were sent abroad for incineration. The courage, composure and strength shown in the programme by Leona Bermingham and Glenn Callanan, who lost their son Lee's organs, were incredible and I do not believe any of us will ever forget what we watched. I commend the "RTÉ Investigates" programme itself and the work of Ms Aoife Hegarty, who is not for the first time shining a light into the dark places of our health service, which needs to be done. I hope that some good and change will come from this.

In his statement, the Minister answered a number of the questions that I had planned on asking, those being, whether he would confirm that the practice had not happened in CUMH before and that it had not happened in other maternity hospitals. He has initiated a review in respect of the latter. When does he expect to have the results of the reviews and how will they be presented to the Oireachtas? If the reviews highlight that this has happened before, how does he plan to contact anyone who has been affected? I hope that no one else has been affected.

The Minister has committed to publishing the human tissue (transplantation, post-mortem, anatomical examination, and public display) Bill by the end of the year. Will he commit to prioritising it in the spring legislative programme? That would be very important, as we need to see it through. There is a gap. The audit's results were 12 years ago but we have not followed up with legislation.

I wish to focus on something. The Minister said that there would be three reviews and he would take and implement their recommendations. There has been a fundamental failure of governance. No matter the results of the reviews, we can see that. With whom will the buck stop and what will the ramifications be for any individual or department that is ultimately responsible for this? There have to be some ramifications.

The Minister's speech references future learnings and improvements for the future and how we can minimise the risk of this happening again but what he delivered was firmer in that he asked how we can stop this happening again or make sure that it does not happen again. I like what he said more than I like what was written into the speech. I hope we will see that in terms of follow-through by the Minister on what needs to happen in this area.

Another issue I want to raise is the blaming of Covid for what happened. Again, this does not hold water. It can be easy for people to forget how difficult things were in April and May 2020, but that said, given what we are dealing with here and the sensitivity of the matter, throwing Covid around as an excuse is not acceptable. People are sick and tired of that when it comes to trivial things in their lives. When it is thrown into the mix, without any reasonable basis to the ordinary man and woman, for something as serious and sensitive as this matter it angers people. I would welcome a comment from the Minister on that as well.

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