Jennifer Carroll MacNeill (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputies for all of their contributions, both in this debate tonight and in different ways as we work together.

We are having this debate as a direct result of the HIQA report, which dealt with three cases of the incorrect insertion of non-surgical grade materials into the bodies of young children. I was asked this evening whether I had apologised to the families; it was the first line of my statement. The very first thing I did was to apologise to the families directly. I have offered to meet them, and I am always available to meet families who wish to discuss these things with me. While there are a number of governance, structural and other issues that have to be worked through, at the end of the day, what we are here for - certainly what I am here for - is to make the experience of patients in the paediatric system better. We have to remember, as many Deputies have said, that there is so much that is going well within the paediatric system.

The situation can be broken into three categories. There are illnesses that are being well and appropriately managed and emergencies that are being appropriately responded to. Believe me, I have been in the paediatric system and have had that experience. Then there are illnesses that are not being well-managed or are being made worse because of decisions within the paediatric system. That is our second category. This HIQA report, however, relates to the third category, which is actual harm being done through wrongness. The HIQA report alludes to a well-intentioned background and there are other reports that I have not received that we will discuss. We will discuss motivations in those things, but actual harm being done through wrongness is a totally different category. We have to conceive of our improvements in the paediatric system thinking about all three of those categories, namely, illnesses that are responded to and managed well, those that are not and the problem of actual harm. I am conscious of that and the impact on the families.

Deputies have raised a number of important structural issues. I will do my best to respond to as many as I possibly can. I know the HIQA DDH report is related to the next business on the schedule. To be clear, I have asked and made sure with the HSE and CHI CEOs that this report will be published in full, excluding the personal details. It is an initial audit that covers a certain period - I am aware that there are other cases, and we will discuss them - but I have not received it. I know we will discuss it in greater detail. The Nayagam report was commissioned on behalf of the HSE CEO specifically because he was not comfortable enough with the internal CHI response. Deputies have correctly asked me about the implementation of the rest of the recommendations. I am given to understand that the end of quarter 2 - June - is when the remaining recommendations will be complete, but I will update the Deputies.

I have also been asked a number of times about the CHI board, the governance structures and moving into the next hospital. They are the same questions that I would ask and have asked. As I said at the outset, there are two things we need to do much better over the coming 12, 14, 16 or 18 months. The first is to open the hospital. The second is, obviously, to ensure that we have the improvements in spinal surgeries that we all want to achieve. The legal structure is under the 2018 Act, where the board is constructed, created and managed differently to any board I have ever seen before, in the sense that it does not have the same direct ministerial - I do not want to use the word "control" - direction-----

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