Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I acknowledge once again that this matter is a cause of great anxiety to many patients and many families attending these services, and I am determined that we will get to the bottom of it. As the Deputy knows, an Irish Medical Council complaint is being considered at the moment and an independent review is being established under the guidance of UK expert Mr. Selvadurai Nayagam. The terms of reference, as is always the case for any review, will of course be done with consultation - consultation with the reviewer himself, who will of course want to meet the interested parties, advocacy groups and families, of course in consultation with the families, and with the advocacy groups. They will not just be written by the HSE or CHI. The review will be independent, but we do need to bear in mind that any review into CHI and the hospitals concerned will be achievable only with the co-operation of the hospitals concerned, and I would expect their full co-operation with the review.

Last week I appealed to politicians on all sides, the media and the public not to come to any conclusions about what happened here until we know the facts. I want to reiterate that now because I have read the letter that Deputy McDonald sent me this morning. It puts a new complexion on this, as she says. I do not know if it is genuine or if it was ever actually sent. I do not know if it was received or acknowledged, and I do not think the Deputy knows those things either. However, it does indicate that there was a level of knowledge at management level about what was happening, and that a multidisciplinary team, MDT involving nurses, doctors and therapists was consulted. It also claims, perhaps correctly or incorrectly, that the families and parents involved consented to what were essentially experimental procedures in a very difficult case, where patients were not fit for any other surgery. That puts a very different complexion on what we have heard to date and is very much at variance with the impression created by some of the stories the Deputy and I read on online media. It is exactly why we should not jump to conclusions. We need to come at this from a sensible, level-headed, calm, considered approach, ensuring that nobody jumps to conclusions until we know all the facts. Of course, the review, therefore, has to be thorough and independent.

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