PARENTS AND REPRESENTATIVES of children who remain on prolonged spinal surgery waiting lists, are to meet with the Taoiseach, the Minister for Health, the head of the Health Service Executive, as well as the head of a HSE task-force on children’s spinal surgeries, on Monday, over ongoing “issues” in the provision of the children’s care.

A notice published on Children’s Health Ireland’s (CHI’s) website, on September 13th, stated that CHI – which is responsible for the provision of care of children in hospital in Ireland – was not in a position to publish its own spinal surgery waiting and activity lists for last August, which were due to be published on Friday, 6th September.

CHI has apologised and said that publishing the lists was “regrettably delayed because it was aligning the lists with a “reporting structure” currently used by the National Treatment Purchase Fund, a government body, which was established to decrease waiting lists in the Irish public healthcare system.

“We apologise for this delay and we intend to publish the report as soon as possible,” CHI stated on its website.

The latest figures published by CHI last July, showed that 287 children were waiting for spinal surgery as of July 26th.

These figures showed that 258 spinal surgical activities had been undertaken up to July this year, which weee described as “spinal fusion” procedures and “spinal other”.

Parents and child spinal advocacy groups have been sent correspondence from the office of the Taoiseach, seen by this reporter, to attend a meeting at government buildings, at 3pm, Monday “to discuss paediatric spinal issues”.

The meeting is to be attended by Taoiseach Simon Harris, the health minister Stephen Donnelly, the head of the HSE, Bernard Gloster, Dr David Moore, head of the HSE’s paediatric spinal task force, “and all their respective teams”.

One of the advocacy groups invited to the meeting is OrthoKids Ireland, which is made up of parents of children on the waiting lists for spinal surgery, as well as other orthopaedic/limb reconstruction surgeries.

Ahead of Monday’s meeting, OrthoKids Ireland sent a petition to Minister Donnelly containing 1083 signatures, calling for the “immediate resignation of the board of Children’s Health Ireland (CHI)”, over its handling of the prolonged waiting lists.

It claimed the board of CHI had “presided over the catastrophic collapse of paediatric orthopaedic care in Ireland, leading to irreparable harm, permanent disability, and even life-threatening conditions for some of the most vulnerable children in our society”.

The group argued that the Board of CHI had “profoundly failed” to fulfill its responsibilities under the Children’s Act, 2018, and had “failed to adopt the highest standards in its duty of accountability to the Department of Health and the Minister”.

It said children with complex orthopaedic conditions are suffering “irreparable damage” due to prolonged waiting lists.

The Minister for Health has previously admitted that health service has “failed” children on spinal surgical waiting lists.

Despite pledges by the Taoiseach in 2017, when he was Minister for Health, and by CHI, that no child would wait longer than four months for surgery, children continue waiting years for surgery while their conditions worsen.

Minister Donnelly told CHI last month that a commitment it had made to significantly reduce the waiting lists had “not been delivered on”.

Minister Donnelly said successive governments had “failed these children repeatedly and over many years” despite allocating “substantial financial resources to support CHI in managing and driving down the waiting lists”.

Minister Donnelly is also awaiting a HSE audit report, that he ordered eight months ago, into where exactly CHI had spent €19m the government had allocated to it to rescue the waiting lists.

Last July Minister Donnelly said he is aware that the money was spent “far more broadly across CHI”.

OrthoKids Ireland accused CHI of having “utterly failed” in resolving the waiting lists debacle.

It claimed waiting lists continued to climb, and limb deformity and reconstruction patients feel “abandoned” by CHI.

Last month, the parents of eight-year old Dublin boy, Harvey Sherratt, who has life-threatening scoliosis (curvature of the spine), was removed from CHI’s ‘urgent waiting list’ for spinal surgery without his parents being informed.

OrthoKids Ireland have claimed there is a lack of appropriately qualified surgeons in paediatric orthopaedics to perform surgery on children with the most complex forms of scoliosis.

This was also stated to this reporter by Professor Damian McCormack, the lead paediatric orthopaedic consultant surgeon at Temple Street Hospital, which is run by CHI.

“The gravity of this situation cannot be overstated, as it represents one of the greatest physical abuse of children in the history of the state and a betrayal of trust for families relying on the healthcare system for their children’s needs,” OrthoKids Ireland said.

It has called on Minister Donnelly to “establish a new, independent inquiry into CHI’s governance and operations”.

When asked for a response on OrthoKids Ireland’s comments, a spokesman for Minister Donnelly replied: “The Minister has no role in the internal Human Resources processes of CHI or any other hospital.”

CHI did not respond.