A mother from Cork has confronted Taoiseach Micheál Martin over the healthcare services available to her daughter Katie, who has cerebral palsy, reports Breaking News.
Antoinette Burke said her 18-year-old daughter could undergo a potentially life-changing but costly surgery in the United States.
She explained that if Katie had been able to access the surgery at the age of four, she wouldn’t now require a hip replacement, reports Breaking News.
Ms Burke approached the Taoiseach as he arrived at the Fianna Fáil think-in in Cork, stating she had first reached out to his office 15 years ago.
She detailed Katie’s condition, explaining that her daughter suffers from hip dysplasia, a retroverted pelvis, a twisted femur, and one leg shorter than the other.
“Nobody in this country will do anything for her. Katie needs help, and I can’t stand by while you’re all standing here. You’re going in there to talk about healthcare, and this is your legacy,” she said, reports Breaking News.
“This is 15 years on the 24th of this month that Katie will be waiting on surgery,” reports Breaking News.
Ms Burke said she had tried to arrange meetings with Tánaiste Simon Harris and Health Minister Jennifer Carroll MacNeill to discuss her daughter’s case.
Mr Martin responded that “for some reason, the clinical consultants have made a judgment”, reports Breaking News.
Chief Whip Mary Butler offered to take Ms Burke’s details, but was reminded that she had already been informed about the case in the Dáil two years ago.
“I’ve been contacting Micheál Martin’s office since 2010, and it’s only the last year that we’ve got a response, and it’s from his secretary, not from him,” Ms Burke said, reports Breaking News.
“Pat Buckley from Sinn Féin has brought Katie’s case up three times in the Dáil, and every time it’s ‘leave it with me’, ‘leave it with me’, ‘leave it with me’, reports Breaking News.
“I needed some way to tell him because I don’t know if his secretaries are telling him when I’m sending emails in, because they probably get hundreds. When I saw it this morning, I said ‘I’m going over, he needs to know’,” reports Breaking News.
Mr Martin said that Katie’s case wasn’t “necessarily emblematic” of the experience families face when trying to access disability services.
“What it could reflect though, is the relationships between the clinical world and families and parents,” he said, reports Breaking News.
“I read the note that Antoinette sent me there, and there’s been a lot of interaction with very, very senior consultants in this field, in paediatric surgery, particularly orthopaedic paediatric surgery, who – apparently, from that note – are saying that they didn’t believe that surgery was the right course of action, and they either refused or took a decision not to do it on clinical grounds,” reports Breaking News.
“It’s a very, very difficult case for a mother, and obviously the struggle and the journey for that family has been a long one from the day the lady was born and born prematurely, and has been engaged with services on an ongoing basis,” reports Breaking News.
“It is a very, very difficult and painful journey for families, and families and mothers want the best for their child. I understand that fully, and mothers and fathers will do everything for their child, and that means, at times, very difficult engagements with consultants and clinicians,” reports Breaking News.
“I think clinicians make their best judgments in respect of the timing of surgery, and I’ve come across this in many cases where people are anxious to get the surgery, clinicians are saying ‘not yet’ or ‘we don’t believe it is clinically justified’, reports Breaking News.
“On the other hand, if surgeons believe that they can’t do it here, there is a treatment-abroad scheme, and I’ve often referred parents myself through the treatment-abroad scheme, and it has been effective. But again, it needs sign-off from international clinicians before you can be treated abroad under the treatment-abroad scheme. And I always say to professionals and to all of us here, that we have to always try and look at these cases through the prism of the family and the mother and father and the child,” reports Breaking News.
“But this case has been ongoing for some time from the file, and there clearly has been disagreement in respect of clinical decisions on this and that makes it very difficult, from a political perspective, to overly interfere and sort of instruct doctors to carry out surgery,” reports Breaking News.
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