It is a source of “great frustration” that only 19 children of almost 1,000 who had spinal surgeries in the past two years, travelled internationally for procedures, despite over €16 million in available funding, the Minister for Health has said.
Jennifer Carroll MacNeill told the Dáil “there is a clinical element to that”, where the international outsourcing option was available but used so little. From a “systemic perspective”, in a challenged system, that “doesn’t ring true to me”.
However Children’s Health Ireland (CHI) has written in the past fortnight to 81 families about the possibility of international travel.
Ms Carroll MacNeill said they were “trying to expand” international options in the EU and US to have “multiple hospitals” available.
READ MORE
“It is essential,” she said that “there is a very clear understanding that those options can and should be used”.
She also said it was “deeply regrettable” that “an enhanced adolescent transitional spinal service” for which funding was also provided by her predecessor, in 2024 to the Mater hospital, only began to operate in the second half of 2025.
Ms Carroll MacNeill was speaking as she opened a debate on paediatric spinal surgery waiting lists following the Cabinet decision to establish a statutory inquiry over a series of scandals in CHI.
She invited TDs to bring to her attention complex cases families raise with them to ensure these children get “the intervention that they need in a timely and appropriate way”.
The paediatric spinal surgery management unit established last year to co-ordinate better surgery management across Temple Street, Crumlin and Cappagh hospital has reduced surgery waiting times and since April 2024 over 800 new patients have been seen in clinics.
Ms Carroll MacNeill said she wanted “to assure patients and families that I have heard what they say to me and that their perspective is vital” in ensuring necessary reforms.
Communications between clinicians, health staff and families is still an issue and “we have appointed a spinal patient advocate liaison co-ordinator” to “try to improve communication”.
She has commissioned an audit of CHI and as part of that an expert has been appointed to conduct a qualitative survey to better understand patient experience.
Earlier in the Dáil, Taoiseach Micheál Martin said considerable work will be necessary before legislation to establish the statutory inquiry can be introduced. Concluding terms of reference “takes time”, he said.
The Dáil heard that 446 spinal procedures were completed to the end of October, an increase on last year, but 462 additional children joined the waiting list.
At the end of October 2025, about 68 per cent of patients were waiting less than six months, compared to 2024 when about 56 per cent of patients were waiting. Some 6 per cent of children are waiting over 12 months.
Sinn Féin health spokesman David Cullinane said “even today, there are 222 children on waiting lists for surgery, most of them waiting longer than three months”.
Highlighting the case of the late Harvey Morrison Sherratt, he said CHI had failed the nine-year-old whose spinal curvature deteriorated from 65 degrees in 2022 to 130 degrees in 2024. “Harvey was entirely failed every step of the way” and “his case is now a defining symbol of systemic failure”.
He said countless children had been failed, including Dolshianna Carter, who died aged 10 after complications with her surgery and TJ Coughlan diagnosed with spina bifida and scoliosis, “denied intervention and now told his condition is inoperable because he spent his childhood on waiting lists”.
He also referred to Mikey Henry from Co Mayo who’s still waiting for care.
Labour health spokeswoman Marie Sherlock said one parent whose child has died said “her child became a political football, political with a small ‘p’ between consultants, between the egos of consultants”.
She said it was a “bitter irony” that the families of some of the sickest children in the State have to fight so hard to get appropriate care.
