Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú)

I asked Simon Harris 13 months ago how many children were taken off the waiting list for scoliosis treatment. Some 13 months later, Simon Harris does not know the answer to that question. That is an incredible situation. The Taoiseach spoke about the folding of CHI into the HSE. I welcome that. It is something we pushed for. I had this debate with the Taoiseach. The truth of the matter is that unless you get to the core of the dysfunction at management level, it is not going to make a whit of difference. I also welcome that there is an investigation into this but the truth of the matter is that so impervious is the management of CHI to transparency on this issue that unless there are tools to force it to come before that investigation and provide papers, it is not worth a hill of beans. It is absolutely necessary that the Taoiseach can give a commitment to the families today that we are not just going to go through the motions in these actions and that they will mean something.

The other aspect of this is accountability has to be imposed on this Government. If there is no cost in terms of these actions by Ministers, there is no change. People are cursed to wake up morning after morning to these situations happening over and over.

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