Scoliosis and Inquiries: Statements
Dail Éireann — 2026-03-04
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Peadar Tóibín (AON), Meath West

At the heart of this is a human tragedy. The response to a recent parliamentary question I submitted showed that in the last five years 126 individuals have been damaged up to and including permanent incapacity or death at CHI. A total of 752 other individuals have been damaged needing medical treatment. There have been 6,900 dangerous system failures within that organisation. Some 23,000 other incidents were reported in that period. The answer to another parliamentary question I put in recently showed that 525 scoliosis surgeries on children have been cancelled in the last four years and that increased from 85 in 2022 to 164 last year, so it is increasing all the time. I do not believe the Minister has explained why that is the case.
Organisations defend themselves; that is what organisations do. When there are dozens of reasons given over time as to why information cannot be provided to families or advocacy groups, we should not be surprised that people are sceptical and cynical about the reasons for it. The Nayagam report is another example of that. Phase 1 has been completed but families have been refused sight, supposedly for legal reasons. The family of Harvey Morrison Sherratt are not getting the information they need. Documents are being redacted. Documents are being withheld even from the legal representatives of the advocacy groups. Now we hear today of the facilitator. I believe that is a downgrading from an independent mediator down to a facilitator.
The 16 weeks for terms of reference to be decided should be coming to an end now-----

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-03-04/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:43+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-03-04