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

Before I turn to my main issue, but on the basis that this is health-related, I commend the staff in Our Lady of Lourdes hospital where I had to undergo a testing procedure. All is very well but I must say the staff there were incredibly professional and made something that should not be enjoyable in any way as enjoyable as it could be and definitely as painless as it could be. I just want to state that on the record.

I turn now to an incredibly serious issue for a little child - a baby girl - and for other people and their families. In this case, we are talking about a child born last July. I will go right to the end in the sense that the child was diagnosed with hyperinsulinism. It impacts a number of people but is not that prevalent. The problem here is there was an issue with even being diagnosed in the first place. It was raised by a constituent who came to me. Luckily enough, the issue has been dealt with, but I wish to go through the problem that exists here and then the specific difficulties this family had to go through.

The parents were told the treatment their child needed was in either England or Germany. They ended up being set up for six medevac planes. Hyperinsulinism is a genetic mutation. The child had lesions on her pancreas and this releases insulin willy-nilly. It is an incredibly serious condition and affects about one in 200,000 people. The parents in this case realised their child needed a PET-CT scan. They were told this could only be done in Manchester and required a specialised isotope dye. They made arrangements to travel to Manchester in January and in February, but these were cancelled at the last minute for several reasons, including the isotope not being available and, on another occasion, contamination of the dye. These problems in Manchester meant the family had to travel to Berlin. The issues they encountered there were incredible. This family was put through a great deal of stress and many issues. At one stage, the clinic in Berlin even told them Manchester had not been paid for the scans so on that basis it could not go ahead. The mother of this child had to pay €4,500 at the last minute. This is an issue that will need to be addressed, but there are many others beyond it.

The family has been advised that the machine to carry out the isotope testing is available in Ireland but there is no one here able to operate it. The isotopes have to be specifically made and brought in, and in some cases this is from outside the EU. The family asked why the specialist from Manchester could not travel to Ireland to perform the scan here and were advised this relates to medical licensing issues for the medic. We need to know why this machine is not up and running if we have one here. In my follow-up contribution, I will go through some of the desperate circumstances this family was put through. In fairness to the mother, I think the family members did an awful lot of the heavy lifting themselves and got this scan done. I was only too delighted when the child was diagnosed. She is in a far better place now and thriving. Obviously, she has great parents, but we need to be able to help them in these sorts of circumstances.

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