Pat Buckley (Cork East, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I wish the Minister of State and the Minister, Deputy Foley, the best in their new roles.

I listened to the Minister's opening speech a while ago and to many of the Deputies. I will cut straight to the chase, hoping that one of them might be able to assist me. I have been working with someone who is now a young woman, but was a child when we started this.

Her mother wrote to me and said:

I am a mum to an 18 year old lady with cerebral palsy. She also has a dysplastic hip, retroverted pelvis, twisted femur and autism...Katie has a dysplastic hip since she was 4 years old and we brought her to the Paley institute in Poland to meet Dr. Dror Paley, who following his examination told us that Katie's pelvis is retroverted and the ball that should be in the socket is now 50% [dislocated].

She goes on to say that Katie had spinal surgery in 2014 which released the spasticity from her body that had her in pain every day and allowed her to walk independently for the first time in her life when she was seven years old. We have been working on this for a long time. We are in a situation where Katie has gone through the whole child system, since she was four years of age. She is now 17, nearly 18. She has been waiting for surgery for 14 or 15 years. We have been in constant contact with services and we have been told by the HSE that there are surgeons in Ireland who are available to do this surgery, but this has been going on for 14 years. There is a lack of responsibility or accountability or someone does not want to take on the responsibility of doing this operation. I would be delighted to give the Minister of State all the information. I will use polite language. This girl has been waiting for 14 years for surgery and all she has been getting is excuses, that she is too weak and will not make it and so forth.

Now that Katie is an adult she is in limbo. She does not get any services from the Brothers of Charity where she was transferred with the progressing disability services three years ago. Her physiotherapist is on maternity leave. She does not have full-time physiotherapy. She got a break and got a six week block in 2014 and has had nothing since. Her situation is deteriorating. We are talking about disability services. It must be heartbreaking for the family and individual - I have sat with them - to be told that it can be done. All of the specialists said they could do it until they looked at the person and then they said they cannot. We have reports from other parts of the country and from the United States that these surgeries can be done and this girl could walk, but unfortunately she has regressed now and has gone back into a wheelchair. I wanted to highlight the fact that we are talking about disability services here and we have amazing people within them. I appeal to the Minister of State or Minister, Deputy Foley, - if I could give it to her I would - to sit down with me to discuss this case to try to solve it.

See this speech in context