Scoliosis and Inquiries: Statements Dail Éireann — 2026-03-04 ============================================================ Jennifer Carroll MacNeill (FG), Dún Laoghaire I will address a number of issues and questions that Deputies raised. We take the same approach to both inquiries, with the appointment of a facilitator specifically to engage with the different groups. That request has been socialised and agreed with the different groups, which includes Dignity4Patients on the Michael Shine side and eight groups on the scoliosis side. There are different views among the groups and it is important to acknowledge and reflect on that, as there have been different views among scoliosis and spina bifida advocates in previous years. Some participated on a spinal task force and others did not, and I respect both perspectives. I have been the recipient of responses from all of the different groups and those voices are not being reflected in their entirety here today. That is because people have not necessarily been in touch with Deputies in the same way, but I have to acknowledge there are more voices than those who have been reflected as having been in touch with Deputies. I know that because I have seen their responses and they stand somewhat in contrast to what was said. I do not say that with any disrespect to any group, but I have to acknowledge that there are many groups involved in this. Dignity4Patients is on one side and there are multiple scoliosis and spina bifida action groups on the other. That is important. On the Nayagam report, I condemn any reference to it in a Sunday newspaper prior to communication with families. That did not come from me. A small group of people were engaged with that. I read lots of things in Sunday newspapers that are never put there by me. I am hurt and appalled on behalf of the health system that any person with access to such a sensitive report would do any such thing. It certainly did not come from me and our communication was focused on getting a deep clinical briefing and putting a proper structure in place between that clinical briefing on 6 February, which was a Friday, and communication with families on 11 February, the following week, in an intelligent, appropriate and accurate way. I deeply regret any Sunday newspaper ridiculousness. I cannot publish Nayagam 1 until Nayagam 2 has been completed. That is how the process was structured. Those are the commitments that were given to the High Court and I cannot, as a member of the Government, knowingly take actions that contradict commitments that have been given to the High Court. If I could find a way to publish the report without doing that as a member of Government and a Member of Parliament I would, but I cannot. Nayagam 1 will be published when Nayagam 2 is completed, which is how the process was established. Regarding the terms of reference, the word "complex" is not intended to in any way narrow the terms of reference. They are being given a facilitated process to be agreed and determined, and we take the broadest possible view in that regard. I am sorry if that is the impression that was given. It is certainly not the intention. We have never really had this process previoulsy, which has been deliberately set up so it is not the Minister or the Government dictating it, as was the case in the past, where terms of reference were set and then people were sent on their way. We are pausing, specifically, to enable the breadth of analysis about the documents that are there and the breadth of engagement that is possible. This is a different way of doing that so there is no intention to narrow it. Many Deputies have raised the point of the interplay and tension between the breadth, the robustness and the timeliness. This is a triangle of great difficulty in determining how tribunals can and should be structured. What every Member wants is to have a tribunal, a commission of investigation or whatever the forum that is effective. We talked about the sodium valproate one here. I am not prescribing that, nor am I prescribing interim reports, which was raised. I am not prescribing anything. I am very deliberately asking for a report from somebody who is independent of the Department of Health and of Government to engage and to look at all of the structures and to recommend to me how that be done. There is an interplay between the breadth we want to achieve, as mentioned by Deputies Rice and Paul Murphy, but also the timeliness. We do not want something that is going on as was referred to, for ten or 11 years, and we do want something that is legally robust. That is going to be a complex interplay and that is going to be something about which there is great capacity for disagreement such as on how it should be indexed. At the end of the day, I have to receive the recommendations and make an actual decision about how we take that forwar, rather than getting stuck in limbo forever in relation to it. I wanted to take both of these inquiries forward independent of Government, transparent and impactful on behalf of the people who very badly need them. I will speak to some of the issues in relation to scoliosis services and the improvements or the issues that are contained with them. Not every Deputy is here but I will carry on. There are four additional consultants, one of whom started in August and three of whom are starting in May, which is very significant additional capacity, as well as additional theatre capacity. The question of waiting lists versus waiting times was raised by Deputies Rice and Sherlock in particular. I would ask the following question: if you need a specified procedure, would you rather be one of ten patients waiting for a year or one of a hundred patients waiting for a month? The answer is so obvious. If my child needs complex scoliosis surgery, it is the timeliness, not the number of other people on the list, that matters. The number of people on the list is less important than the time they are waiting. The number of people on the list should be added to as the population grows and as diagnostics get better. If in a time of increasing population, increased diagnostics and additional Saturday outpatient clinics, our waiting lists do not increase, then we are doing something wrong. This is a basic tenet of how healthcare is delivered. It has to be quick. That is why Sláintecare sets timelines, not list lines around these things and it is really important that I update the House again on the time measures that are relevant to the individual patient. The outpatient list has fallen since January 2025 from a waiting time of 9.7 months to 4.5 months in February 2026. That is a considerable improvement by anybody's standard, and that is because we are doing additional outpatient clinics. Because we are doing additional outpatient clinics, we are identifying more people who need surgery, so the waiting list goes up. This is really straightforward. It is the time that matters, and the time for surgery is also coming down from a weighted average of 6.2 months in January 2025 to 5.2 months in February 2026. Is that enough? No, I want to drive it further, but could we all speak the same language? This is from the perspective of the child and the time that they are waiting, and for the appropriate clinical and-or surgical intervention, and let us be at least on the same page, so that if it goes up, Deputies legitimately criticise me on behalf of the Government for that. At least let us speak the same language. The language that matters to a parent whose child is waiting for surgery is the length of time, and parents, I assure Deputies, are thoroughly unconcerned about the number of other people who also wait. The access to care for so very many is such an important issue and I commit to continuing to work on it month by month to deliver additional resources, services, and improvements. However, for this point on, I ask that we speak the same language on how we are measuring impact for individual patients. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. 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