Tom Clonan (Independent)

I welcome the Minister. It is great to see her here in the context of this Bill not being opposed, for which we are very grateful. I commend my colleague Senator McDowell on his drafting of the legislation. I thank my colleagues in the Independent Group and others who cosponsored it.

The Bill deals with an issue that is very personal to me because of my family circumstances. The Minister met my son earlier who has had spinal fusion surgery. He is an example of someone who had that surgery very late. It was quite complex surgery that involved a very pronounced anaesthetic risk. It was traumatic, and unnecessarily so, because of some of the issues that have been well ventilated in this Chamber, at the health committee and elsewhere in respect of not just the spinal wait list in CHI but also the urological wait list.

After last week's health committee meeting with CHI, where we talked about both of those wait lists, I was contacted by a lot of very anxious parents. One lady who came to Leinster House on Tuesday and sat with me in my office for half an hour set out the manner in which her beautiful child was negatively impacted by the issues that persist at CHI. She made the interesting comment that she does not want any more apologies and for everybody to just keep saying how awful everything is. What she wants, she said, is action. She asked what we can do to help the cohort of children, teenagers and young adults who have been impacted by these issues.

I very much welcome that the Bill is being allowed to progress because it is a pathway towards that necessary action. I thank the Minister for not opposing it. I hope she and her colleagues in the Cabinet will support it in the Dáil and get the measures it contains up and moving. I know she will do everything in her power as Minister to that end. She is the type of person who has the energy, integrity and the motivation in the public interest to drive it forward. What these families need now is action and this Bill is a step in that direction.