Tom Clonan (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I echo the congratulations to our ceannaire. She would be a great representative of Ireland in Europe, and of Fine Gael of course. I am delighted to hear that news.

I raise again Children's Health Ireland, particularly the waiting list for urological surgery. I have raised complex spinal surgery and the fact there are hundreds of children on that waiting list. Much complex spinal surgery associated with scoliosis, kyphectomy and other complex surgeries has been suspended. These children are suffering, in pain and in crisis. I appreciate the Minister for Health, Deputy Donnelly, is liaising with the families but we need a task force to begin those surgeries with immediate effect. The lives of these children are being altered and limited as we speak.

As I raised here last week, it has also been brought to my attention by parents that the urological surgical list is not being dealt with by Children's Health Ireland. This relates to children who have structural changes in what are essentially their genitalia. We have boys and girls entering adolescence and the teenage years and developing into young adults, and they need little surgical interventions because of structural changes in their genitalia. If they do not get the interventions, they face a higher risk of cancer, infertility and urinary incontinence in adulthood. Many of these children are on the same waiting list for spinal surgery. Imagine all of the challenges they have to contend with, blossoming into young men and women and having no surgical intervention to allow them to develop normally. It is a particularly cruel and reprehensible treatment of disabled children. It affects their psychosexual and sexual development, self-esteem and emotional well-being.

Children's Health Ireland is one of the only children's hospitals in Europe that does not have a transitional urology programme. That is international best practice. We are complete outliers in this regard. I have no confidence whatsoever in the management or board of Children's Health Ireland. There is a particular risk as Temple Street children's hospital closes and transitions to the new hospital on the St. James's site, as well as with the closure of Crumlin children's hospital, that children will be exposed to avoidable injury and death because of the incompetence of the management and board.

The story here is not about the billions spent on the children's hospital but about the price being paid by little disabled children in terms of their organs, bones and spines.Why are we allowing this to happen? I call for a debate on Children's Hospital Ireland with a focus on the impacts on children.