Gino Kenny (Dublin Mid West, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

This has been a very sorry episode, to say the least. We talk about trust and confidence in our health service, and when families have been let down fundamentally, it can leave a terrible taste in people's mouths. Families should never be in this situation. There are families with children in complicated situations who need that intervention as soon as possible, and because of the fallout of this, that wait is going to be longer. That is the difficult for those families to accept. They know they have children who need an intervention as soon as possible, and now all surgery seems to be suspended. When you do not have trust, you do not have anything. If the reviews do anything, they have to rectify the mistakes that have been made in the past number of years and probably beyond that. I am no medical expert, but surely lines were crossed around clinical governance and criteria. There is no doubt about that. I am a member of the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health and two years ago, a number of surgeons appeared before the committee in relation to this issue. It was one of the best committee meetings I have ever been at. It was extremely positive, and the people who spoke, spoke very passionately about the situation they find their patients in. I think families drew confidence from that and from the assurances of previous Ministers that the situation was going to be resolved once and for all. Now, families find themselves going backwards rather than forward. That children are being let down is probably the cruellest thing of all. I will have a question for the Minister later on. If surgery has been suspended, and I know Bernard Gloster has said that is not the case, families will have to wait years upon years for this intervention. Surely, we have got to look at different ways of intervening. I know it is quite complicated, but can specialists be brought from different countries to Ireland as a temporary measure? Again, I know it is complicated, but can children get surgery outside the State? I think we might have to look at those options. I know there are complications in relation to children travelling, but we may have to look at that. It is not perfect by any means, but families want the intervention as soon as possible. In relation to the reviews, it is extremely important that the families and advocacy groups have their say on how this has all played out. What has happened, particularly around clinical governance, is completely unsatisfactory. We need to learn the deep lessons from the mistakes of the past, and hopefully not the future.

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