Mary Henry (Independent)

People are rightly angry, and we should be ashamed, of our position on this league table for the health service in Ireland but at least the report was published. I am even more furious to find that a very serious report has not been published by the Department of Health and Children. Two years ago, the former chief executive officers of the health boards and the Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Jim Kiely, asked for an investigation into the unit for metabolic disorders in Temple Street hospital. The unit screens children from throughout the country for metabolic diseases. It is extremely important that these diseases are picked up in the newborn to prevent serious damage to those children in later life.

Apparently, the report was finalised in 2004. Dr. Philip Mayne, who runs the unit, said there was some communication with him in April 2005 but nothing has happened since. The reports, apparently, expressed disappointment about the governance of the unit, funding, consent, aged equipment and so forth. I do not know if we can debate a report which has not been published but there should not be a person in the House who is not appalled about this problem. Apparently, new-born children throughout the country are not being properly screened and we have been boasting about this for decades. At least we have a published report to examine about the disgraceful situation in the health service, and I do not take any comfort from people saying something about figures being out of date. We might be behind Lithuania if we got the up-to-date figures——