Lynn Boylan (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Curim fáilte roimh an Aire. Over recent weeks as this scandal has unfolded, everybody has been shocked by it. Like previous speakers, my thoughts are with the children and their families who have been affected by the scandal. Those families need to be assured now that they will get the supports they need. It is too often the case that parents of sick or vulnerable children in this country have to fight tooth and nail for services that are basic human rights, including healthcare and education.They are often forced to go public about their children's condition, purely to get those services. That is not right. Parents have been put through the mill repeatedly by successive Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael Governments just so their children could access the basic services that they, like every other citizen, should have.

Nineteen families have found themselves at the centre of a national scandal and their children's healthcare is the subject of repeated news cycles. However, the reality is that this goes much deeper than the 19 families and the care they received; rather, it results from the decade-long failure on the part of the Government to deliver on the commitment of the former Minister for Health, Deputy Harris, to the effect that children in need of spinal surgery would receive it within four months. That Fine Gael commitment was never realised. There is almost an attempt by some to scapegoat a single consultant in this scandal, whereas the truth is that we have a complete system failure that has continued for years. The failure to provide children with pre- and after-care and the failure to reduce waiting lists have meant children's conditions are in some cases inoperable, as we have heard from Senator Clonan. It is a shocking indictment of a country as wealthy as Ireland that children have now found themselves inoperable due to delays in offering healthcare. We know that delays affecting those children who can still receive surgery make the surgery more complex and dangerous, and the recovery times are longer. Their skin, which is delicate because of their condition, is at greater risk of infection. This is a system-wide failure of the children and their healthcare.

Nobody wants to politicise the tragic situation of the families affected and all those other families who have children with spinal conditions and who have had additional stress and worry heaped on them in recent weeks regarding the care their children are receiving; however, the reality is that we are here tonight because Fine Gael has introduced this Private Members' motion to the Seanad. It is Fine Gael that has been in government for the past decade or more. It is the former Fine Gael Minister for Health who gave the commitment to the families that things were going to change. I do not see any acknowledgement of that in the Private Members' motion. The first step is for the Government to acknowledge that the commitment made was not delivered upon and put its hands up and say it is sorry for that and will change the way it does things. It is regrettable that this admission was not in the motion.

We need to know why we are hearing that consultants felt pushed to conduct more surgeries per month than they were comfortable with. Who was pushing? Consultants associated with CHI, not just the consultant under investigation, have consistently raised concerns about the lack of recovery capacity, supporting nursing staff and the availability of ICU capacity across Temple Street and Cappagh hospitals. We all know that tackling waiting lists is not simply a case of increasing the number of surgeries; you have to resource all the ancillary services, such as ICU beds and the nurses and physiotherapists. I hope the outcome of the review will shine a light on these matters and why the consultants were not listened to when raising concern that there were risks involved in carrying out so many surgeries per month in the absence of putting in place all the backup services.

That said, we do not need to wait for the outcome of the review for the Government to take action. Children on waiting lists today need care today. They need no further delay and their parents and patient advocate groups need to be assured of the quality of the care. What we need from the current Minister, Deputy Donnelly, is the putting in place of an urgent domestic plan. He did not make the commitment of the former Minister, Deputy Harris, but we now need him to put in place the urgent domestic plan across our hospitals to address the backlog. Likewise, while treatment abroad is not appropriate for many of the children awaiting treatment, we need the Minister to find a new EU partner with which to recommence the service for those for whom it is an option.

It is essential that we get the terms of reference of the independent review right. The Minister and his Department need to take ownership of that review. The HSE and CHI are the bodies under investigation, so the reviewers should be reporting back to the Minister. The terms of reference must be crafted with the advocates and families to ensure they have full confidence in the review. Too often, parents of sick or vulnerable children have to fight the State tooth and nail to realise those children's rights and needs. The Minister should not make these families fight on this matter.