Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I had an opportunity earlier to discuss this issue and I discussed my constituent, who luckily got a second opinion for his daughter who was at that stage three years and three months old. She had been engaged with Temple Street since 2016 when she was 14 months old. I put some of this information on the record earlier. At the end of 2018, the doctor recommended proceeding with a Salter osteotomy bilaterally. That is one of the brutal operations we are talking about with the cutting into the hips and all that goes with that. There are long recovery times and enormous impacts. The child in question now does gymnastics, which I doubt would have been the case had the surgery that arose from that particular diagnosis gone ahead.

The doctor gave the diagnosis in April 2019. Luckily, the father and mother sought a second opinion. That second opinion stated there was no significant dysplasia in their child's hips and did not recommend any surgical intervention. In fact, the second opinion stated that to do so would only be potentially meddlesome. That is fairly clear. I know this issue and some of the other issues I have raised have been brought to the attention of the Minister. We need clarity on the audit and beyond, because it must extend further than just the period of 2021 to 2023. We need to ensure that we detail all of these cases.

I will give slight detail of the case of a man who contacted me. It is an historical case. He contacted me after I did an interview on a local radio station, LMFM, about CHI. The man's mother died when he was six months old. He had meningitis at 16 months old and as a result, began having problems with his hip. He had osteomyelitis, which is an infection that affects the bone, and needed treatment.

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