CHILDREN at risk of fertility issues or cancer because they were left waiting too long for surgeries have not been informed by the health service, CHI bosses admitted today.
It comes as politicians grilled Children’s Health Ireland execs over a series of scandals with one Senator telling officials: “If you were running Tayto Park I wouldn’t let my kids go there.”
CHI’s new CEO Lucy Nugent started the Health Committee hearing today by making a litany of apologies for the series of scandals that have rocked the organisation.
These include children waiting too long for scoliosis surgeries, non-medical springs being implanted in kids and hundreds of children undergoing hip operations that they may not have needed.
The latest scandal to hit CHI comes from an internal report which outlines waiting list minsmanagement, serious cultural and governance failures along with bullying allegations.
Questions were also separately raised about children in need of surgery for undescended testes were left waiting too long which may have impacted their fertility.
CHI bosses said they did not know how many children may have been impacted by this urology issue and revealed that their parents were never contacted.
Sinn Fein’s David Cullinane said this was “extraordinary” while Senator Tom Clonan said it was a “systematic failure that amounted to the sterilisation of disabled people.”
The Independent Senator, whose own son faced delays with his spinal surgery, told the CHI bosses: “If you were running Tayto Park I wouldn’t let my children go there.”
A HSE official told the Committee that she had referred this internal CHI report to An Garda Siochana for investigation due to concerns of improper use of finances.
CHI told the Committee that they did not believe the report did not meet the threshold for criminality.
Fianna Fail TD Martin Daly – who has been a GP for 40 years – grilled CHI over the hip dysplasia scandal after a report found that hundreds of children may have undergone surgeries that they did not need.
‘ABSOLUTELY SCANDALOUS’
He also took on the issue of non-medical grade springs being implanted in children during scoliosis surgeries that later rusted and needed to be removed.
The doctor turned TD said it was “absolutely scandalous” and slammed CHI for trying to throw a surgeon at the centre of the scandal under the bus.
He said: “This is a whole system failure” as he questioned whether the current CHI leadership team were fit to take on the move to the new €2.5 billion children’s hospital.
He said: “It would be like having a top of the range hardware for your computer but the software is rotten – there is no other way to put it.”
He criticised former CEO Eilish Hardiman who has moved to a new position within CHI as she oversaw the health service during all these scandals.
He said: “Ms Hardiman you were there – it looks like under your regime you were rewarded for substandard management of the hospitals and I am saying that strongly because all of this happened under your watch.”
Fianna Fail Senator Teresa Costello repeatedly questioned Ms Hardiman on whether she should remain in her position and asked “Do you feel you’ve been held to account?”
Ms Hardiman claimed she was being accountable by answering the Committee and tried to pass the buck by claiming some of the scandals raised were “pre-Children’s Health Ireland.”
‘LEGACY ISSUES’
She replied: “I have been answerable to this committee and apologise for the failures. We have accepted the report in relation to HIQA.
“But I think we also have a particular speciality that is a particular focus but we have 38 other specialties that are working to international practice and international benchmarks in relation to their clinical outcomes.
“There is definitely I believe within CHI…some of the issues were pre-CHI. They are legacy issues.
“Some of the issues are definitely with the massive change we are trying to implement and we accept those and we in a process of trying to improve them.”
The Committee heard that the HSE will create a panel of experts to review all 2,200 children who had hip surgeries in Ireland in recent years to check up on their condition and establish if they needed the operation.
Fine Gael TD Brian Brennan told the Committee that this could amount to the biggest medical negligence case in the history of the State.
