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

I welcome what the Minister of State said at the end. I will provide the information explicitly because it is absolutely necessary. While all this is commendable with regard to cancer care, it does not deal with the issue at hand, which is this child who was diagnosed with hyperinsulinism, and the fact that we have the machine here to carry out this PET-CT scan. There is an issue with regard to the isotopes and then ensuring we have a medical practitioner who is sufficiently licensed. That is something I expect an answer on because it needs to be done.

I will also be providing information the mother told me with regard to the issue they had. Following the child having seizures, she went to the GP first of all. Eventually, the GP referred them to Temple Street neurology department, and it diagnosed the child with epilepsy very quickly and spoke about the necessity to have Keppra medication, which is incredibly dangerous if a child does not have epilepsy. The parents were slow; they did not want to do this. They were actually sent from the service because they said they wanted to wait until a set of tests had been carried out. At that point, an ambulance had been called within a couple of days. I will not have time to deal with the absolute specifics of that, but it was an absolute nightmare. In fairness to the paramedics, they did a blood sugar test and it gave a reading of 0.6. It was a nightmare in the hospital but eventually, the child was diagnosed with hyperinsulinism. However, the waiting, the journeys over and back to Britain and Germany and the number of cancellations show this is an abject and absolute disaster. There is a lot more detail beyond that. I would not like to be put in that circumstance.

See this speech in context