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Irish Examiner
2 days ago
- Health
- Irish Examiner
Our children bear the scars of Simon Harris's broken promises on scoliosis surgery
It was 1pm when my six-year-old son Darragh looked at me and said: 'I have a really long day ahead of me, Mammy.' Most children that age say things like this when they are waiting for something exciting. For Darragh, it meant something else entirely. It was his way of telling me that the exhaustion and discomfort in his small body felt endless. This was during his first wait for scoliosis surgery. During that time, I watched my child's health unravel. Darragh became cachectic, a level of wasting usually seen in end-stage cancer. He was so underweight he no longer appeared on the children's growth charts. His curved spine was crushing his stomach, leaving him unable to eat enough to keep up with the calories he was burning just to survive. His body was working overtime simply to keep him alive. Scoliosis is not just a curve in the spine. It can affect every system in the body — lungs, heart, digestion, mobility. I learned this not from a textbook but from the daily reality of caring for my son. Washing his little body in the shower, I thought to myself: if I failed to care for him in the way the HSE was failing him, I would be in jail. Claire Cahill: We have seen every squandered opportunity, every cycle of promises and excuses, every resource wasted while children's conditions worsened. Picture: Conor Ó Mearáin/Collins We are not new to this fight. For 10 years, we have campaigned for better — for my child and for others. We have seen every squandered opportunity, every cycle of promises and excuses, every resource wasted while children's conditions worsened. In 2015, Darragh was placed on his first waiting list for surgery. In 2017, Darragh's story reached national television through RTÉ's Living on the List. Families like ours shared the suffering, the deterioration, the impossible waits. The country reacted with outrage. That same year, scoliosis delays were officially recognised by the Ombudsman for Children as a breach of children's rights. Then minister for health, Simon Harris stood in front of cameras and promised that no child would wait more than four months for surgery. We believed him. We believed change was coming. But in 2018, an outsourcing plan that could have helped clear the backlog failed. Sixty operations were tendered for, only 28 completed. Once again, precious resources were squandered through mismanagement, with consequences for children who were left to deteriorate. Now, in the most recent outsourcing effort, we are watching the same mistakes play out all over again — another cycle of lost opportunity and unnecessary harm. Only four surgeries have been completed this year, despite waiting lists continuing to grow. In 2023, the scandal took a darker turn. We learned of children being implanted with non-medical-grade devices and infection rates that were off the scale. The Ivy Report from the Ombudsman for Children told of a teenager who waited five years for spinal fusion, during which her curve worsened from 30 to over 135 degrees. Born with cerebral palsy, she suffered severe physical and mental decline while repeated concerns to her GP, consultant, and CHI went unanswered. The report showed how maladministration led to poor outcomes, a stark example of systemic failure that has cost children their health, and in some cases their lives. In 2024, the Spinal Management Unit was established, supposedly to improve communication with parents. Yet it consists of the same people, rotating chairs on the Titanic. My experience tells a different story from the promises. My son's July out-patient appointment was cancelled and we were never informed. Parents are expected to be mind-readers in a system that can barely manage the basics. A taskforce also exists, but not a single parent of a child currently in CHI has taken a seat, such is the depth of the mistrust. Why are we funding taskforces and management units that do not work? Children still waiting Today, in 2025, children are still waiting. My own son is once again back on a 'semi-urgent' waiting list, which is supposed to mean surgery within 13 weeks. He has been on that list since November 14, 2024. As I write this, it is now 39 weeks later — three times the promised timeframe. In April, we were told there was no date and no timeframe for surgery. For children like Darragh, semi-urgent means living with a spine that continues to curve because scoliosis does not wait for the system to catch up. For many children with congenital or early-onset scoliosis, surgery is not a one-off operation. They spend their entire childhoods on waiting lists, moving from one delay to the next. Each postponement causes further deterioration. Every lost month increases the risk of more invasive procedures, more pain, and poorer outcomes. Parents have been shouting out for years, warning of the grave danger to our children and the mismanagement of care and resources in CHI. We have presented evidence, told our children's stories, and pleaded for timely intervention. Our calls fell on deaf ears. What must happen now is beyond debate. CHI cannot be trusted to lead scoliosis services any longer. An independent inquiry is needed, along with external oversight of how every euro is spent. Time and again, they have shown themselves incapable of delivering safe, timely care. While they mismanaged resources, our children kept waiting for wheelchairs, for appointments, for surgery, and some waited so long that the chance for help was lost forever. Simon Harris will always be associated with that four-month promise because he has never delivered on it. The consequences of that broken promise are written in the physical and emotional scars our children carry. This is not about political point-scoring. A minister can publicly promise something that is the standard in other countries, fail to meet it year after year, and still go on to lead the Government. In the meantime, hundreds of children like Darragh remain in limbo, paying the price in lost mobility, worsening curves, and years stolen from childhoods. We do not need new targets that will be quietly forgotten. We need action on the promises already made. We need leadership that understands that 'urgent' means today, not next year. Under Simon Harris's watch, children have shouldered the life-altering consequences of delayed care, while he emerges politically unscathed. Out of respect for every child who has suffered or lost their childhood to these delays, he must now face his own consequences and step down. Every delay robs a piece of childhood that no surgery can restore.
Irish Independent
17-07-2025
- Health
- Irish Independent
‘My boy could 100pc travel for spinal surgery but we have never been offered the choice', says mum of teen left on waiting list once again
Mother of Darragh Cahill (16) says he has been on the waiting list for surgery for eight months In November 2017, Crumlin Children's Hospital apologised to Darragh Cahill, at the time a seven-year-old boy who had waited 15 months for surgery to correct a curve in his spine. The previous February, Darragh had captured the hearts of the nation when he appeared on an RTÉ Prime Time Investigates programme, Living on the List.
