Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú) | Oireachtas source

Information released to Aontú in response to a parliamentary question in recent days has shown that in the last three years, Children's Health Ireland has cancelled more than 160 operations for children in Crumlin and Temple Street hospitals due to the lack of intensive care beds.

These are cancellations for very serious operations for children who are very sick. Nine of these cancellations were for heart operations for children. Ten cancellations were for children needing serious orthopaedic surgery. There are just 23 paediatric intensive care beds in Our Lady's Hospital, Crumlin, and just nine in Temple Street. Many of these children and their families have waited years for what in some cases is lifesaving surgery, only to get the heartbreaking news that the surgeries have been cancelled.

I repeat that there have been 161 cancelled surgeries for children in just the last three years. It is an incredible figure. There was no clinical reason for the cancellation of these surgeries. The surgeons were there and they were ready. The operating theatres were ready. The equipment was ready. The very sick children were fixed for the surgery but there were simply no beds for these children to recover in. It is an absolute scandal. We have just come from Covid-19 when the talk was about the necessity for intensive care beds in this country.

Children's Health Ireland, CHI, has been in the news for many other reasons in the last couple of weeks. There was the implementation of unapproved non-CE marked springs, which were put into children, and which were made from corrosive material resulting in significant pain, suffering and stress for those innocent children. That alone is a scandal of enormous proportions. In the last two weeks we have heard reports of hundreds of unnecessary hip operations carried out in two Dublin hospitals, with 79% of the hip operations carried out in Cappagh hospital and 60% of the operations carried out in Temple Street simply not meeting the threshold necessary for the surgery. As the Minister can imagine, those parents are sick to the stomach about what happened. When the Tánaiste, Simon Harris, was Minister for Health, he promised that no child would have to wait for more than four months for a scoliosis operation, yet today children are currently waiting for up to three and a half years for that operation. Fine Gael stated that they wanted to make Ireland the best country in Europe to be a child, but presumably that does not apply if they are sick, if they are waiting for surgery, or if they need a scoliosis operation. How does a child developing a curvature in his or her back of up to 125° achieve that goal? How does an unapproved, experimental spring put into a child achieve that goal? How does an unnecessary operation for a child achieve that particular goal?

We in Aontú have raised the issue of accountability so many times in this Chamber. Why can the Government not move from recognising there is a crisis to implementing accountability? Will the Government remove the board of CHI or will it allow them to remain in place after such devastation to so many children?

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