Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, Solidarity)

When Emilia was three years old she had osteotomies on both hips at Temple Street hospital. Her mother felt unduly and inappropriately pressured by the surgeon. It started out with the possibility that she might need one hip done and then it was an absolute necessity to get both done. Emilia was six before she could walk property. She was the slowest to do a cartwheel and the last to ride a bike. She still has pain when she climbs stairs. Her younger sister Hannah was then later in Temple Street with an unrelated eye condition. The same surgeon spotted her and insisted on checking her for hip dysplasia. The mother said that was not necessary as she had been checked at the Coombe hospital and everything was fine, but the doctor insisted.

He logged into the CHI database, looked at the scan and said Hannah needed to get both hips done. The mother did not trust the doctor at this stage. She went back to the Coombe, where the doctor said that was a load of nonsense and that she did not need either hip done. No hip was done. It is a chilling example of what this scandal looks like to parents.

What it looked like inside the hospitals is illustrated by an email sent by then clinical director of Cappagh in November 2023:

Recently, it has become apparent that many children listed for pelvic osteotomies are being cancelled or are having their surgery deferred at short notice, thereby causing inefficiencies on surgical lists. Following a meeting today, I have decided that patients listed for pelvic osteotomies will no longer be discussed at the MDT [multidisciplinary team]. It will be up to the patient's individual consultant to review the X-ray and decide if they wish to proceed.

Surgeries are being cancelled because other surgeons thought they were unnecessary. Instead of saying something was wrong, the clinical director said we will stop discussing them at the MDT and it will be fully in the hands of the original surgeon to decide what he or she would do. That is incredible. What was the motivation for this? If Hannah had been operated on, because they had private health insurance, the surgeon would have made €1,500 for the first hip and another €750 for the second. That is what they would have made for Emilia's two hips. This is an example of the poisonous role of private profit in what should be a public health system.

I have three questions for the Taoiseach. First, why are the surgeons who conducted hundreds on unnecessary surgeries still operating on children? One of them could do an osteotomy tomorrow. Surely they need to be suspended, or, at the very least, stopped from performing osteotomies until the audit is verified. Second, the Government and CHI have publicly committed to independently reviewing all of these osteotomies, but the clinical director of CHI has emailed staff saying, "it is acknowledged that some patients and parents may request a retrospective review of their case to determine the indications for surgery". Does the Taoiseach agree that the onus should not be on parents to request that their cases be reviewed? Finally, does the Taoiseach agree that the review should not be limited to patients from 2010 onward, as is clearly indicated in CHI's statement? The operations started in 2002 and all of them need to be reviewed.

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