SKETCH:IT IS THE ultimate challenge to Minister for Health Dr James Reilly. Will he inquire into his own profession?

The call for an independent inquiry into the practice of symphysiotomy was repeatedly made in the Dáil in a moving and shocking debate. The procedure was “barbaric”, labelled female genital mutilation and described as “aggravated sexual assault”.

Symphysiotomy involved breaking a woman’s pelvis to “assist” childbirth.

Most countries had given it up by the 1940s but it was reintroduced in Ireland in 1944, a “medicine from the dark ages”, as one TD said. Minister of State Kathleen Lynch, an early advocate of the need for an inquiry, put the case and the challenge to her senior colleague most succinctly, when she said “it cannot be a case of deny-until- they-die government”.

About 150 of the estimated 1,500 women in Ireland who underwent the procedure are still alive. Several of them spoke at a briefing for TDs, outlining the horrors of the practice and its consequences, from permanent incontinence and difficulties walking to psychological damage and its impact on their families.

Many TDs were traumatised by the stories they were told. Some were emotional in the chamber as they spoke of it.

Dr Reilly, who expressed the Government’s commitment to address the issue, told the House that symphysiotomy was a practice from the 1920s to the 1980s before the advent of safe Caesarean sections. Most hospitals gave it up in the 1960s but it continued in Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda until the 1980s.

Independent TD Catherine Murphy’s mother underwent the procedure in 1952 at Holles Street hospital. Now in her 90th year, she “still talks about it”.

Ms Murphy said in many cases the practice was intended to ensure a woman would not have a Caesarean section. “The idea was that a section would limit one’s ability to have a raft of children. It worked in my mother’s case. By 1956, she had five children and more were to follow.”

Ms Murphy reminded the Minister of his different attitude in Opposition, in contrast to his “balanced” remarks now. She worried that the report would consider only “clinical issues without addressing the social context” and “will be unable to provide the answers people want”.

The researchers had difficulty getting information. Several speakers had spoken of medical records no longer being available. What happened to them?

Sinn Féin health spokesman Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin, who has persistently pursued the issue, highlighted the effort by the medical establishment and previous governments to “conceal the true nature and extent of this abuse of the bodies and of the rights of Irish women”.

It’s a messy business for the Minister but the call echoed around the Dáil. Will he do the right thing?