Seán Canney (Galway East, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to speak. The Minister's opening remarks give confidence that we will get things done to make sure that what has been happening will be sorted out and we will get to a stage where people will get confidence back in the services again. This has been a major setback for public confidence in the services in Temple Street hospital. As has been alluded to by many Deputies, it is harrowing to read in the reviews that have been published so far the extent to which things were happening. No one in this house has anything to say other than that. The unplanned interventions, infections and repeat surgeries all caused trauma for any child or person having an operation, never mind the trauma it caused the family waiting for the child to come out from surgery to see how things went. It is hard to understand in this day and age with all the rules, regulations and safety checks we have that things like this can still happen.

It is not everyone. Some of the finest people working in medicine work in surgery in this country. That must be said. It is important. The nursing staff are dedicated to their duties and their careers. It is important that is repeated because everything can get lost in the negative commentary. There has been a huge tragedy with the loss of a young life. We can say what we like, but that should never have happened and how it did must be extracted from the reviews and investigations that will be carried out. It is important in a situation such as this one that we have communication which is clear and which keeps the families of those involved in these surgeries and of those waiting for future surgeries completely up to speed with what is happening. Liaison officers must deal with them on the basis they feel they need to restore their confidence in services.

Four processes are ongoing. They are the reviews, investigations and so on; the families waiting, listening and reading about what happened; the families and children who have yet to go through surgery wondering what will happen for them; and the need to undertake a confidence restoration project to ensure people have confidence in the system. The biggest thing the Minister must do is to put in place with the HSE an interim plan for those who are still waiting for surgery - those who have been on waiting lists and do not know what is happening - so they have a clear, decisive interim plan to make sure these procedures are carried out with the utmost haste, safely and securely for the sake of these people. The longer they wait, the worse the torment will be. I am not sure how that will be done, but we have the expertise in the HSE and the Department of Health to put a crack team together to make sure it happens as a matter of urgency. The parents and families must also be part of that plan.

In 2023, we are reading about people dying in surgery for no reason other than it not being good practice. How can we make sure these things do not happen again? We allow for human error when people are carrying out procedures. We have every kind of digitalisation, robotic surgeries and everything else. We are going down a huge progression of modernising surgeries but if we are not doing it correctly, not doing the basics correctly, not using the proper instruments, coils and so on, I must ask how it slipped through the net. The biggest question people have is how in the name of God this happened.

This is a wake-up call for medicine to ensure enough people are in place to carry out these surgeries in a timely fashion for children and that the operations can be carried out without people being under undue pressure. There must be simple checks in place for everything that is done across the board. It might take an investment of money. It is not a cost, it is an investment. Everyone is together on this. It must be resolved and we must ensure it never happens again. We keep saying that but I hope this is the last time we are speaking about something like this in our health service.

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