The State has reversed its position and agreed to pay for a spinal operation in London for a 12-year-old Cork girl who has been on a waiting list for surgery at a Dublin hospital for 10 months, writes Eithne Donnellan, Health Correspondent
An anonymous benefactor had offered this week to fund the €100,000 operation for Ann-Marie Kelleher, from Killavullen, near Mallow, after her parents raised her plight through the media.
Tom and Bernadette Kelleher raised the issue after being told their daughter was ineligible for funding to undergo the surgery overseas under the National Treatment Purchase Fund or under the Health Service Executive's Treatment Abroad Scheme.
In a bid to speed up the operation, they had taken Ann-Marie to see a specialist in London who is an expert in the treatment of children with Rett syndrome and scoliosis. Ann Marie has both conditions.
They were told the operation to straighten her spine could be carried out within weeks in the UK if they could pay for it. An anonymous businessman contacted the RTÉ Liveline programme this week offering to foot the bill and there was much debate afterwards about why the State could not have met the cost itself.
Yesterday afternoon it emerged the State was now offering to pay for Ann-Marie's treatment in London after all.
However, the Health Service Executive, the Department of Health and Our Lady's Hospital for Sick Children in Crumlin Dublin, where Ann-Marie had been on a waiting list since last April, differed on how the U-turn came about.
The HSE said the rules of the Treatment Abroad Scheme had been changed by the Department of Health.
The Department of Health said the HSE always had discretion to refer patients abroad outside the terms of this scheme if it felt this was necessary.
The department added that it was revising, in the context of a recent European Court judgment, the scheme's guidelines to include in it cover for patients who could not get treatment in Ireland "within the time normally necessary for obtaining the treatment" and taking into account their current state of health.
"While the revised guidelines have not yet been issued, we have informally advised the HSE on this matter," a department spokeswoman said.
Meanwhile, Crumlin hospital said it understood the child could be funded to travel abroad because a clinician in London was offering her a better outcome than it could.
Bernadette Kelleher described the development last night as "unbelievable", given all the family had been put through.
Her daughter was due to undergo her surgery in Crumlin a number of times only to have the operation cancelled. Ms Kelleher said if she was now to accept this offer of State funding, her solicitor would need to receive it in writing so the HSE could not go back on it.
The businessman who offered to pay for the operation indicated that if the Kellehers did not eventually need the money, he would make it available for another cause.