Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Gan dabht, tá scrios déanta ag an scannal i dtaobh cúram sláinte leanaí ar leanaí agus ar theaghlaigh ar fud an Stáit. Tar éis muinín a mhilleadh i measc go leor daoine, tá an Rialtas anois ag gníomhú mar lucht féachana, cé go bhfuil freagracht air dul i ngleic le seo. Tá tuismitheoirí amuigh ansin nach bhfuil a fhios acu go fóill ar dhéanadh obráidí ar a leanaí gan ghá nó gan chuireadh. Níl sé seo maith go leor.

Children's lives have been devastated by the litany of failures in healthcare. The public have been listening in real shock and anger recently. On Tuesday, we had the damning report on how unauthorised springs were implanted into three children during spinal operations. The failure to protect these children is an absolute disgrace.

There is a pattern of broken behaviour when it comes to children's healthcare. It is the same hospitals over and over again. The Government is standing back and acting as a spectator in all of this. We see it in the scandal of hip operations being carried out on children when, as we were told, those operations were not needed at all. Patients only received letters about the scandal in recent weeks but information released to us this week reveals the former Minister, Stephen Donnelly, was informed about this a year ago and the current Minister was briefed in February. We are talking about the possibility of young children put under the knife and their bones being sawed into. It is traumatic surgery, and it happened to children between the ages of one year and seven years. It is beyond the worst nightmare of any parent. The question these parents are asking us is why they were kept in the dark for so long by the Government.

We know that 561 children must now be independently assessed following the audit, which covered the years 2021 to 2023, but that is only two years. What we do not know is how many children are affected. It may be hundreds or even thousands. Just how bad is this? We are being contacted by parents whose children's cases reach back a decade and further. The emails and phone calls keep coming. It looks like 2021 to 2023 is only the tip of the iceberg. It goes way beyond those two years.

One horrified parent contacted us this week. His daughter was a patient in Temple Street in 2016 from the age of one year right up to three years. A consultant diagnosed the child with hip dysplasia and was adamant that she needed surgery. In his words, that surgery would have required "sawing into her hip bone and reshaping the socket". Because the child never showed any symptoms, the parents sought a second opinion from a specialist orthopaedic surgeon in the North. That consultant concluded that their daughter did not need the surgery, as she did not have the condition. He said that he was horrified that a doctor had made such an error of judgment and that he would inquire about it. This was years ago. The parent went on to tell us that the stress they were under during this time was like nothing they had ever experienced before. That is not the only case we have heard of where people got a second opinion, to be told that no condition at all was evident.

Catastrophic failures in children's healthcare have been known for a long time. It is the job of the Government to sort it out, not to sit back as spectators. At what point does the Government take responsibility? When does this come to an end? The Government must get to grips with the scale of the hip surgery scandal. The families deserve answers. They want to know how many children are involved. How far back does this go? When will parents be informed if their child was operated on unnecessarily? Will the Government commit to expanding the scope of the audit beyond the narrow two years, so that all children and parents get the answers they need? How is it that a health Minister has known about this for a year but parents were only told about it last week? Where is the open disclosure? Where is the compassion in that?

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