I was very concerned when I saw exactly what the Deputy has just described. There is a review going on right now and we will have the results of that in a few weeks. Early November is what the hospital is saying in terms of providing that review to me. When I have that review, I am going to share it. I imagine the Dáil, the Seanad and the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Health will be very interested in looking into it. I know the Deputy will appreciate that I do not want to prejudice that review. We must let the rev…

It is a very important point. I will give a detailed response. The Department of Health has advised that the HSE South/South West Hospital Group, Cork University Hospital and Cork University Maternity Hospital have apologised to the bereaved parents. They very much regret the incident. The Department is informed that open disclosure did occur with the parents in line with the HSE open disclosure policy of 2019, which we are all familiar with, and as part of ongoing engagement. In line with the HSE's incident manage…

The families were contacted initially on 11 and 12 May and then on the subsequent dates that I have given. The HSE advises that the families were told. As part of the review-----

I want to make sure we get exactly the right information on the record of the House. Therefore, I will ask for a note on that as to exactly what language was used in the letters to make sure we have exactly the right information on that.

The specific details the Deputy seeks are not communicated either in this or in other events with the Department through the agreed protocols. This is why we need to look at the review. We will have the review at the start of November and it will include exactly these issues. For reasons of patient confidentiality, which I am sure we all support, those types of details do not get reported into the Department of Health or to me.

Deputy Gould raised a similar question. The very clear advice we have from the HSE and the hospitals involved was that the appropriate communication was made with the families in May last year. If it is the case, as the Deputy says, that very relevant details were only disclosed by phone before "RTÉ Investigates", I want to know about that and I will be taking that up immediately with the HSE.

What happened is completely unacceptable and it is outside the guidelines. The national guidelines state that when a parent or guardian has consented, the processes that should be used are burial or cremation, not incineration. Furthermore, Cork University Hospital and Cork University Maternity Hospital go further than that and say it is only burial.

I thank the Deputy. Yes, the Acting Chairman and I, and perhaps other Members in the Chamber this evening, were part of that committee. I have prioritised this Bill. The obvious question I too would ask is "Has it been prioritised just now?". I can tell the Deputy, categorically, that the answer to this question is "No". The Chief Whip and I met several weeks ago to prioritise various Bills for this Dáil term, and the human tissue Bill was one of those Bills. My intention is to bring it to the Government for public…

Exactly that question needs to form part of the review. There are three reviews. The first review will establish what happened and why it happened. It will then be up to us as the Legislature to see if policy responses and additional investment are required. Then it would be up to us to respond to that.

I would be delighted to. I thank the Deputy for her questions. I want to walk through exactly what happened in terms of how this is escalated and the classification of an incident as serious or very serious. This goes to the question that has very reasonably been raised, was raised by RTÉ, and indeed has been discussed by other Deputies. That classification is a matter for the reporting hospital when the incident is being reported through the HSE's incident management framework. The South/South West Hospital Group …

The Deputy directly asked me for the sequence of events as to what happened.

She did and I am responding directly. The Deputy asked specifically what the chronology of events was-----

-----what reports were done and how the reporting was done, and I am answering her question in detail. The second review is the regional perinatal service requirement. As the Deputy will be aware, I have instructed the HSE to start a third review, which looks at all hospitals. With regard to the timing, the first incident occurred on 25 March last year when CUH mortuary sent perinatal organs and human body parts to Belgium for incineration. The second incident occurred on 2 April last year when CUH mortuary sent pe…

I thank the Deputies for tabling the motion and for their contributions. It is a debate we need to have and one we need to come back to repeatedly. Some time ago, a constituent of mine in County Wicklow, Sarah, needed a hip operation. She was suffering. Much like the scenario recounted by another Deputy, she was waiting in intense, debilitating pain. She did not have private health insurance and she was told that on the public system, it was going to take two and a half years before she could be operated on. I went…

Yes.

I thank the Deputy for the question. Last year, when I came into office, I requested that the board of the HSE conduct a full audit into the PPE that had been purchased because a huge amount of public money was spent at very short notice in extremely difficult circumstances. That audit has been completed and is being considered by the HSE with a view to ensuring best practice. With regard to the ventilators, the HSE is looking to recover moneys from a company based in China. I am sure the Deputy will be aware of th…

I am pleased to address the House on the Health (Amendment) (No. 2) Bill 2021. The Bill makes provision to open indoor hospitality under certain conditions and makes minor amendments to the system of mandatory hotel quarantine. The Bill will give effect to the Government’s decision to enable access to relevant indoor premises for fully vaccinated persons and persons who are immune from Covid-19 by virtue of the fact that they have recovered from the disease. On 28 June 2021, the National Public Health Emergency Tea…

I thank Senators for their contributions. There was a marked difference between them and some of those made in the Dáil. I congratulated Deputy Bacik on entering the Dáil but suggested to her that she would see some different styles of debate there compared with that which obtains in the Seanad. I thank everybody for a useful debate, which included much criticism that I listened to carefully and must take on board. I have a closing speech but I have taken many notes and would prefer to try to address the various th…

What about staff? People are saying, as an act of solidarity, to let everyone into the pubs. Think about that for a second. They are saying to put people's lives at risk as an act of solidarity. We have to be careful when we talk about solidarity. Outside of this place, people get what this means. Some contributors stated that this is not enforceable. At the same time, however, they tabled amendments to bring in things like antigen testing, which would make it much harder to enforce. Pubs and restaurants are capabl…

I met Professor Nolan and Dr. Holohan this morning and they admitted that there is a great deal of uncertainty in this regard. How transmissible is this virus in children? We do not know that yet. What response will there be from society? Will we have the same level of response as we had the last time? I hope so but we do not know. We do not know how bad it will get but there are things we do know. We know there were 1,000 cases yesterday and there will be approximately 1,200 cases today. We know the numbers in hos…