Gerald Nash (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I recognise the compassion the former Minister for Health, Senator James Reilly, has consistently shown in this regard and the eloquent case he has made in defence of the redress scheme. I was involved in the design of the scheme on behalf of constituents of mine, with the Minister of State, Deputy Regina Doherty, and others. Senator James Reilly has been a consistent supporter of the rights of the women involved.

I am no stranger to the issue of symphysiotomy with which I have been dealing for nigh on 15 years. I recall the very first meeting I attended in 2002 with former Deputy Arthur Morgan who had also expressed a huge interest in the issue to educate myself about symphysiotomy and how it affected women. The meeting was hosted by the nascent survivors of symphysiotomy group which became known as SOS Limited and was supported by the excellent Patient Focus, with which the then Minister, now Senator James Reilly, worked very closely on a range of initiatives to deal with this scar on our recent history. I was absolutely stunned and horrified by the testimony of women such as Olivia Kearney from County Louth who had been a victim of this mediaeval procedure and who, like hundreds of other women, had lived for decades with its consequences.Olivia Kearney and our colleagues in Patient Focus and others have fought a dignified and respectful battle, often in hostile circumstances over the years, to deliver a scheme that works. I commend them for that.

I beg the Cathaoirleach's indulgence to pay tribute to a lady who passed away just over a week ago, Ms Elizabeth Moran, a survivor of the procedure. Her husband, Mr. Tommy Moran, at one point chaired the Survivors of Symphysiotomy Limited, SOS, group and worked very closely with me and others in the House and Members of the other House to try to address some of the wrongs that were done to his wife and to other women across the country. It is a deeply personal issue for me because this practice, while it was discontinued in many hospitals across the State decades ago, and it was discontinued across the developed world decades ago, there still are records to prove that the procedure had taken place very recently in Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda, my home town hospital.

I have friends and neighbours, family friends and people who I care about, who have been affected by this procedure, so I took a deep personal interest in it. The previous Government, as Senator Reilly said, and as the Minister of State, Deputy Corcoran Kennedy, has said, took a deep personal interest. Not to make too political a point, we have had successive Ministers for Health, going back to Deputy Micheál Martin, former Deputy Mary Harney and others who have effectively ignored this issue. We attempted to challenge this head-on. When I was elected to the Dáil in 2011, I set myself the objective, through working closely with Senator Reilly and colleagues across the north east region, of having a full and detailed examination in the first instance of the reality of the practice of symphysiotomy in this country. We would then use that evidence base to work out a way whereby we could assist the hundreds of women who have survived that procedure and affected by it, to take some kind of practical action that would acknowledge the hurt and pain that they experienced. We did all that. We commissioned the Walsh review. We commissioned the Judge Yvonne Murphy report, a comprehensive report into the practice, and ultimately we designed the Surgical Symphysiotomy Ex Gratia Payment Scheme that was expertly administered by the extremely well-respected and independently-minded judge, Ms Justice Maureen Harding Clark.

Remarkably, practically at every turn, the respective judges, the Government, experts involved and in some cases we as individual public representatives were excoriated and were subjected to bizarre allegations of being responsible for a whitewash, a charge that was repeated in this House today. To quote a headline and very informed piece by Mr. Paul Cullen when he was writing in The Irish Timesabout symphysiotomy recently, the headline said it was the whitewash that never was. There was voluble and sometimes very hostile criticism of public representatives and NGOs, which wanted at all times to put the interests of the women affected first. When others in these Houses preferred to, as Senator Reilly suggested, encourage survivors to take their chances through an adversarial judicial system that in some cases had objectively very little chance of delivering for them, this was most unfortunate.

Objectively, the scheme has been a success. We all worked hard to develop a scheme that worked. It will not heal all of the hurt that has been experienced by the women involved and their families. There are still physical and emotional scars that people are living with to this day. I hope that the scheme that has provided payments to approximately 400 women has helped to some degree to right the wrong that the women have experienced. I am proud to call many of those women friends.