Joanna Byrne (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

There is a history of journalists in Ireland uncovering scandals, including the RTÉ payments scandal, the tracker mortgage scandal and the revelations in the Pandora papers. When questionable hip surgeries in CHI hospitals were raised by a whistleblower and an audit was conducted, this Government stayed silent. It stayed silent on the unnecessary hip surgeries until this scandal was exposed and publicised by the journalists at The Ditch. It is a scandal much worse that the kind the Government is usually embroiled in such as the waste of public money or misleading the public on housing delivery. In no uncertain terms, the children of this country were quite simply failed.

8 o’clock

Parents are still in the dark and worried that their children had unnecessary, traumatic surgeries. What did this Government hope to gain by not informing parents immediately?

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