Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, Solidarity)

I welcome that we are finally going to have a statutory inquiry into the care of children with scoliosis and spina bifida at CHI. It is unfortunate and outrageous that it has taken what it has taken to get to this point where we have an inquiry. Campaigners have been calling for one for a long time, as have some of us in the Dáil. It is not just about the hundreds of children who have been left waiting in pain, getting worse and in some cases becoming inoperable; it is not just about the scandal of the unnecessary, unlicensed, non-medical grade, non-medical devices - springs - being inserted inside children; it is not just about the death of Harvey Morrison Sherratt after having previously been wrongly taken off a waiting list; and it is not just about the outpouring of anger we saw on the streets at the end of the summer around the idea of justice for Harvey, which represented the idea of justice for all our children who are being failed, in particular by CHI but also in general by the State. It is also about the really horrifying revelations from a whistleblower about the treatment of Harvey and the idea that he was palliative, and yet nothing seemed to happen in palliative care, and about what we heard at the weekend - that Harvey was "not fit for a sneeze", which is an awful way to speak about a young child. It is awful that parents have to hear it and then speak out about it.

I pay tribute to Gillian and Stephen for speaking out, obviously at a moment of immense grief, and to all the campaigners and advocate groups who have been pushing for so long for justice and answers when they really should not have to. For me, the key issue in the inquiry is that it is done and that it is co-designed with the agreement of families and advocacy groups. I understand that they want to see a tribunal of inquiry that happens in public, with powers of compellability and all of that. If we could have a reassurance that this will be the approach of the Government, that would be welcome.

I want to raise some related issues. I ask the Minister about the status of the Nayagam report. I got a parliamentary question reply in October saying that this started in September 2023 - we are now in November 2025 - and that "the risk assessment aspect of the review has been completed and is being considered." I ask the Minister if the risk assessment will be published in full and not be redacted. The Nayagam report obviously relates to a particular surgeon. We should not be limiting an investigation of what happened to children. I have been contacted, as I have mentioned twice on the Dáil record before, by an adult patient of this surgeon with many concerns. I am obviously not qualified to say whether there were problems but at the very least, given what we know, adult care also needs to be looked at.

I also want to ask about Cappagh hospital being fully included. I previously referenced the email from the clinical director at Cappagh hospital about ending the multidisciplinary teams, MDTs, because of osteotomies not happening. I got a new parliamentary question reply saying that hip dysplasia and osteotomies are still only going back to 2010, even though we know that these novel osteotomies go back to 2002. It makes no sense to me.

On another issue, the Minister might help me to get parliamentary question replies. I tabled parliamentary questions in early September about diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma, referred to as DIPG, a form of very aggressive brain tumour, and the number of biopsies that are happening. I am still waiting for answers to those questions from the HSE. It has come to my attention that Ireland may be doing an unnecessary number of these biopsies. There are many biopsies when other countries are not doing them, potentially with fatal results for children, so I am looking for answers to those questions.

See this speech in context