Jennifer Carroll MacNeill (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael)

My practice, as much as I possibly can, is to meet people. Like Deputy Clarke, I have met parents and seen the distress. I have parents in my constituency in this situation. There is no difference between our experiences of this. I cannot believe the distress being experienced by the parents of the 71 children. We are already identifying children. Parents are being told through this initial clinical follow-up that their child did not need this.

I will now update the Deputies on the expert review process to follow. We are in the process of establishing that panel. It is not complete but there are a number of experts from Canada and the United Kingdom. It is not surgeons within the system; it is very different. The clinical review follow-up, the first process, is expected to take about six months and for the secondary review panel, the independent expert one, it will take until September for the establishment of the team. We have four at the moment and there are a number of others to come. They need to agree the terms of reference; it is not for us to impose the terms of reference on them. They can assess each case as appropriate once they have begun.

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