Billy Kelleher (Cork North Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

It is just over a year since an all-party motion was passed in this House on the issue of symphysiotomy. Like other speakers, prior to that I was not aware of the procedure. I have attended maternity hospitals in recent years and while I found the experience daunting, it was patient-focused and centred, with the patient at the heart of all decision-making processes. To be informed by the survivors of symphysiotomy of their harrowing experiences was very disturbing. Those meetings in the audio-visual room, where the women outlined in detail their personal stories, which were intimate and tragic, resonated with everyone who attended. The all-party motion put before the House to call for action to put right what was done to these women was passed unanimously.

I welcome the fact that the Minister is not dividing the House on this legislation. I am no constitutional expert and I do not know if the Bill is flawed or not, but its purpose is to keep this issue to the fore to ensure justice will be done and that the women will get the opportunity to tell their stories and seek redress and compensation for the damage done many years ago. It is in that context that although the Bill might not achieve all it sets out to achieve, it is important we keep the issue of symphysiotomy and what was done to these women at the top of the agenda.

I welcome not only the fact the House will not be dividing on the issue, but the remark made by the Minister in his speech that he hopes to bring finality to the issues as soon as possible and that he firmly believes the women who underwent this procedure deserve nothing less. That is a very important statement of intent on behalf of the Government. It is in that context that we must be honest. This Bill, if it passes Second Stage tomorrow night, must still go through Committee Stage and all the other debates in the Dáil and Seanad. It could take some time for the legislation to reach the Statute Book, even with the support of the Government. Even then, do we then expect every woman to go to the Four Courts to seek vindication? I do not believe that is what the Oireachtas wants to happen. We want a redress scheme to be put in place for women to tell their stories and see that we believe them and that we will arrange compensation for them accordingly. That is critical. We cannot ask these women, even if the Bill is passed, to go before the courts with a plethora of lawyers and solicitors to prepare cases. They do not deserve that. I urge the Minister to act in that light.

Politics works at times. We have had major discussions at all-party committees on this issue and the House has never divided on the issue. The fact it is not dividing tomorrow night is symbolic of the importance all Members and all parties attach to this. I was part of a Government that should have acted on this issue. There were at the time the issues of child sex abuse and scandals in the institutions of the church. We will have many more areas of society that must be unearthed and opened up in order that we can accept major wrongs were done to sections of our society.

Tonight, however, I want to focus on the fact that we have, as the Minister pointed out, excellent maternity services. There is the issue in Galway surrounding Savita Halappanavar, and that investigation and inquest is ongoing. In general, however, and going by my experience as someone who has attended a maternity hospitals on a few occasions in recent years, these are wonderful places with great quality of service and staff. They work under enormous pressure and deliver an exceptional service, always ensuring the patient is at the heart of every decision. That is a key change in service delivery. The customer, or in this case the patient, is always consulted. Some of these women did not know the procedure had been carried out on them, they were under anaesthetic, and sometimes left hospital without having been informed that his had happened. I cannot even comprehend this could have happened in this State as recently as 1992.

We must learn lessons from this. We must address the central issue, which is to ensure these women have all the medical support possible, that they receive compensation and redress, that they are believed and that we do all in our power to demonstrate that. In the meantime, we should also learn from their experience. I was concerned to discover there seemed to be no peer reviewing of how obstetrics was being carried out in some hospitals. As we embrace modern technologies and advances in medicine and health care delivery, we should also ensure peer reviewing takes place regularly. It is the norm now and there are huge bodies of support internationally for such practice, and we should ensure that is a major component of Irish medicine. We must continually look for new procedures and improved ways to deliver services. In the context of obstetrics, I hope we have learned from this sad story that we have been told by the survivors of symphysiotomy.

As I stated, we must also ensure that we put procedures in place, learn from that and other mistakes, and deliver a maternity service in which all women will have confidence knowing, when they go to have what should be an enjoyable, if painful, experience in the context of delivering a child and bringing life into the world, that they will have exceptional care and that fellows like myself can have the confidence to hold their hand and assist, and sometimes, as can be the case, even pass out.

I say to the women here tonight that this is an important step. We need not maintain pressure on Government because I believe it is anxious to resolve this as well, but we must keep to the fore the telling and relaying of these women's story so that they know they have the support of those who represent them in Dáil Éireann and that we will continuously advocate on their behalf until such time as we can look every one of them in the eye and say that their story is believed and they have received vindication through whatever means possible. I hope that we do not face the situation where there is the unfolding and sorry sight of women continuously having to seek justice through the courts when we ourselves have the ability to deliver it here in some form of redress.

I welcome the independent review being carried out by Dr. Oonagh Walsh from UCC at the request of the chief medical officer of the Department of Health. In itself, the second stage of talking to the survivors of symphysiotomy and the medical professionals, such as midwives and obstetricians, will allow women to detail and document what happened to them, why it happened to them and allow them a platform to discuss the issue. I presume this has been done in private. I still think that if women want an opportunity to discuss and outline what happen to them and if they want a public forum for that, such a forum should be afforded to them to discuss this issue and outline what happened to them at the hands of the State given that they were victimised and brutalised in public hospitals.

There were some 1,500 symphysiotomies performed since 1944. That is quite a large number of these appalling brutal procedures. It is worth investigating the reasoning the procedure was carried on for so much longer in Our Lady's Hospital in Drogheda. Mrs. Olivia Kearney took a case to the Supreme Court and was vindicated. She won her case. The judge was explicit in his views in his findings, that it was a procedure that was unnecessary in Mrs. Kearney's case. All the medical and documentary evidence that was presented to the court proved that to be the case. That Supreme Court judgment would lead me to believe that there needs to be some unearthing of what was happening in that hospital and in other hospitals that were performing symphysiotomies over and above what was considered normal in the context of international practice.

I cannot understand that this practice was continued here while across Europe these procedures were not being used at all. We were embracing caesarian sections for difficulty deliveries, and that is why I come back to the importance of learning lessons in the context of peer reviews.

I do not know whether this Bill will answer these women's questions. It will give them an opportunity. What I do know is that in the context of this particular Dáil, and my involvement in it, we will continuously pursue this matter in a consensual, all-party way and hope that the Government can come forward with a mechanism that allows these women to seek compensation, redress and all the supports that they deserve. Recently the Taoiseach, in the context of issuing an apology on behalf of the Government, Dáil and State to the Magdalen survivors, mentioned this issue as well. It is incumbent on everyone here to ensure that this is kept to the fore because these women deserve it and, in many cases, they need it.

I welcome the statement by the Minister, Deputy Reilly. I also welcome Deputy Ó Caoláin's significant involvement, not only in the context of the legislation but in promoting an all-party consensual atmosphere here to deal with this tragic case in terms of what was perpetrated on these women. I welcome the fact that the House is not being divided on this legislation and, more importantly, that as the report is published and presented to the Minister he will move expeditiously and carry out the commitments he made to allow these women to get on with their lives, seek justice, vindication and, above all, the truth so that they can live out their lives knowing that a wrong was done to them and that the State apologised and tried to put it right. As to whether the State will put it right for every individual, we must seek to ensure that it makes every effort to do so.

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