Regina Doherty (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

If the Chair does not mind, I would be grateful. I thank the Minister for coming here today. I do not doubt for a second that he will get to the bottom of this issue.

I have been around here since 2011. We have had incredible medical scandals including one in which a procedure called a symphysiotomy was conducted on female patients, which is the most horrendous thing anybody can even consider. We have had medical scandal after medical scandal because of deference in medical circles. I thought we had unrooted all of that in that insofar as we now live in a modern society and nobody would be afraid to say when something is not right. Yet, questions are arising, and there are plenty of them in the list today.

When Deputy Paul Murphy spoke in the Dáil and thereafter tabled parliamentary questions, that did not immediately trigger to the credible senior management we have in Children's Health Ireland, CHI, that something was amiss and they should investigate. They just answered questions inaccurately in the first instance, which really puts a mirror on our parliamentary question system. They answered insofar as to what they expected to be the truth, but we know now it was not the truth. We know now that they were lies. They were inaccurate and the questions were just answered, which puts the whole credibility of that system under scrutiny, first of all. Second, the senior management in CHI did not think what is probably one of the most serious accusations that could be made was enough of an issue to warrant an investigation back in July of last year.

We can go on from there and talk about the number of people who would be involved in medical teams. We know there was not just one but multiple operations. We can start now multiplying the number of people who knew something was amiss. Even if we were to go back, and we genuinely believed this was some new far-reaching experimental thing that could significantly impact in a positive way the lives of those children and it was discussed with the parents, even still, it should have triggered somebody somewhere saying, "Hold on a second. We need to dot our i's and cross our t's." Yet, the most senior management in the most senior offering of services we have for children in this country did not do it.

Not only are we going to try to have one investigation after another, whether they are internal or international, but people are responsible for delivering and overseeing the care and having the governance and oversight of the care. There is a board of management. Every single part of this system failed, starting right with the people who were in the room when the very first operation happened or those who were in the room when multiple operations arising from the use of these springs had to have happened. It kills me to say this but I have such huge admiration for his tenacity - the only reason we are even standing here talking about this today and the Minister will be conducting the international investigation is because Deputy Paul Murphy would not let it go.