Year in year out, week in week out, the stories keep coming.
Hardly a day passes in Leinster House without at least one TD bringing somebody’s personal suffering to the floor of the Dáil in an attempt to ease their pain.
The agony of children stuck on waiting lists. The anguish of parents fighting to be heard. Heartbreaking accounts of lives disrupted by a broken system.
It’s an endless loop of the same story – delays, cancellations, blunders, scandals, oversights, overruns, service shortcomings, miscommunication, non-communication, obfuscation – when all the while patients deteriorate and loved ones protest.
Inevitably, it seems the only remedy left is to go public – but this time in a political, not a medical treatment, way.
The rolling story continued in the Dáil on Tuesday. Another instance of an extremely concerning foul-up in the health service.
The Opposition is already calling it a scandal.
The Taoiseach couldn’t say that.
He can’t draw any conclusions until he sees the final report, which is imminent. However, the always careful Micheál Martin was concerned enough to say “the implications are disturbing” if it turns out some of the assertions in a draft report are true.
But in the litany of woes forever unwinding in Dáil sessions, the latest one comes with a standout difference.
This story comes has a bizarre twist, like a sick joke at the end of a particularly dark tale.
Because while the Dáil record is stuffed with contributions from TDs pleading on behalf of constituents desperate to access essential services or languishing on long waiting lists, in some cases waiting for years for vital surgery while in constant pain, the current controversy represents a reversal of the usual problem.
The Taoiseach sounded thoroughly fed up with the repeated charge that he was concealing something
In a grotesque irony, the uproar is about children having their hip operations in a timely fashion, only for it to emerge that they may not have needed those operations in the first place.
The issue was raised by Sinn Féin‘s Mary Lou McDonald and Aontú‘s Peadar Tóibín during Leaders’ Questions.
The irony of the situation was not lost on Peadar.
“On a daily basis, families are struggling to get healthcare for their children and the dysfunction in the healthcare system is leading to enormous delays and enormous difficulties for those families. And here we have a situation where families actually manage to get operations for their children and we find out that, in many cases, those operations were unwarranted and unnecessary.”
What happened and how? Why did nobody pick up on this?
“There is an excruciating absence of information.”
Mary Lou was on the same track.
She accused the Taoiseach of “an absolute lack of clarity” on what took place in the three hospitals concerned.
“You have given neither information nor reassurance to parents,” she told Micheál Martin, accusing him of “ducking, dodging and diving” and refusing, even now, to give basic information.
But the Taoiseach is constrained in what he can say until the audit report into possibly unnecessary hip operations has gone to the Minister.
His frustration in the face of stiff Opposition questioning was clear for all to see.
“Nobody is stonewalling and nobody is refusing to give information,” he told her.
Later, during the order of business, Pádraig Rice of the Social Democrats, who is the new chair of the Dáil health committee, could see “a scandal of nearly unparalleled proportions” unfolding as many more children had operations outside the two-year audit period. The number affected could run to thousands.
“Let me ask you, for the third time today, when will the audit be published? And if you can’t give us a date or explain the lack of urgency in dealing with this issue, can you tell us how deep does the rot go?”
The Taoiseach sounded thoroughly fed up with the repeated charge that he was concealing something.
“Deputy, you said ‘for the third time today’. I am not playing politics with this issue, nor should you. And don’t be saying things like it’s not credible,” he angrily replied, stressing that the audit is rightly independent of the Government.
“So less of the high, self-righteous sort of rhetoric about this.”
Micheál was very worked up.
He understands the anxiety that parents have when a child needs surgery and that is why a comprehensive and independent investigation that stands the test of time is need.
Yet all he was hearing was the Opposition deputies accusing him of trying to hide the truth.
“Of course, we do want to reveal the truth. No holds barred, not holding anything back,” he fumed. It might be alright for them to kick off over a draft report first published by The Ditch, but the Government has to abide by “legal and proper procedure ... There has to be feedback. That’s what happens in audits.”
As Micheál protested, Mary Lou accused him of keeping parents in the dark while Pearse Doherty, her deputy leader, kept telling him: “You haven’t a clue what’s coming up!”
The Taoiseach was truly exasperated.
“It’s just unacceptable,” he sighed, that for the Opposition to deliberately politicise an issue which is causing such anxiety to parents.
“I find it reprehensible.”
