Fionntán Ó Súilleabháin (Wicklow-Wexford, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

With regard to children's healthcare in Ireland and our Bill to address the scandals of misdiagnosis, I would like to briefly mention my personal experience. From two months old until two years, my son was prescribed antibiotics for throat infections. When he turned two years old, he was misdiagnosed with asthma. He was supposed to begin a lifetime of medication, steroids and inhalers. It was a worrying time for us all. Thankfully, we sought a second opinion from my wife's home country, which some might class as a developing country, where a few relatives are doctors. Describing the symptoms, they could tell us in five minutes over the telephone that it was unlikely to be asthma and was most likely to be mild reflux and advised us to change the baby milk formula and raise his bed 10 cm in height. Thankfully, the problem disappeared literally overnight and a life sentence of medication, inhalers and steroids was avoided. To give another example, not too long ago he had a painful ear infection. After an initial over-the-phone request for a €60 payment upfront, we were astounded to be informed of the magical over-the-phone diagnosis that they were planning for his ear infection - quite an amazing thing really. As a four-year-old, he also had to undergo an anaesthetic in hospital for surgery to extract a number of teeth, which was later deemed unnecessary. Last week, he became a teenager, and like so many local children I know, has gone through his entire school years since junior infants - he is now in secondary school - without ever having a dental or eyesight check other than what we had done privately. How at a time of such enormous wealth has it come to this sorry state of affairs that we have gone so far backwards from the time I started school, which is well over 50 years ago and when this State was poor? All of the above is symptomatic of a very broken system.

I really wish the Minister very well in her job and in her endeavours to clean up the mess that has resulted from decades of Government neglect of children's healthcare in the State under various health Ministries. However, to quote the Proclamation, if we are to cherish "all the children of the nation equally", we really need to see systematic change right from the very top to the bottom.

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