Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú) | Oireachtas source

I, too, offer my deepest sympathies and the sympathies of Aontú to the family of Kevin Flatley. This is a disaster for Kevin's family and friends. It is also a disaster that 90 gardaí have lost their lives in the line of duty since the foundation of the State. Many families fear when their parent or loved one goes out to work that they might not see them come back. Yet, those people still commit to going out and working for our safety on a daily basis.

Families are struggling to get healthcare for their children on a daily basis. The dysfunction in the healthcare system is leading to enormous delays and difficulties for families. We have a situation where families actually managed to get operations for their children. As we found out, in many cases those operations were unwarranted and unnecessary. It is currently a major problem within the State that children who may not have reached the threshold in terms of hip surgery or who may not have suffered from hip dysplasia in the first place may potentially have had operations carried out on them.

I understand that 561 people were included in the audit carried out over the past two years. If the audit is to look back 15 years, however, we could be talking about thousands of parents and children being involved.

I had to leave my son in an operating theatre for a procedure. It was not as serious as the ones we are talking about at the moment, but I saw the fear in his eyes before I left the theatre. It was very difficult to leave that location. Imagine the fury that must exist among the thousands of parents who left their children in difficult circumstances in a situation where potentially the operations there were undergoing were not necessary and could have damaged them. All operations involve challenges. Infection and surgical trauma are possible. It is a serious issue when an anaesthetic is administered to a young child.

Potentially thousands of parents have been left in limbo. For many, there is an excruciating absence of information. This is the real difficulty for them. They want to know how this happened and how hospitals could carry out particular operations at a rate five to ten times higher than the population of the country needed and no one seemed to pick up on it. What Government structures allowed this? Where was the leadership in the hospitals where this happened? What culture facilitated this? Where were Children's Health Ireland, CHI, and successive Ministers for Health during the 15-year period in question? The Department of Health is responsible for all those aspects of our health services. We are asking parents to have confidence in what is happening in respect of their children, yet we cannot tell them what happened to other people's children over the past 15 years. If the idea of the audit is to try to make-----

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