Deputy Mary Lou McDonald - speech from 1 Dec 2020

Teachta, I met this morning with Sophie Redmond, she's 11 years old, she wrote me a letter, I want to place it on the record of the dog and I know she's written to you too, here's what she had to say, dear Mary Lou, thank you for supporting me, my name is Sophie Redmond and I'm 11 year olds, I love watching your videos on Instagram, so that's good, I like how you help people and that's what I want to do when I'm older, you know that I need scoliosis surgery and my friend Chris Andrews has been helping me look for this Please Mary Lou, can you ask the Taoiseach if he can help scoliosis children like me and change waiting lists for good, when I have my surgery I hope we can meet up and do a tick tock dance, happy Christmas, love and high fives, Sophie Redmond, age 11 and she's from Lachlanstown Sophie got her diagnosis in 2017, she was put on a waiting list for surgery to correct the curvature in her spine last March but her doctor has now warned that she might not get a date for surgery until late next year She also needs urgent surgery on both her knees as they can easily dislocate and the delay in Sophie's surgery means that the double curve on her spine is twisting into her lungs and her pelvis She used to play Gaelic, she loves hip hop but she's had to give up all of that because of her condition, she is an incredible young girl and her family are absolutely wonderful as well and they are sick with worry and concern This is an issue that has been raised not just on your watch but on the watch of previous governments I'm imploring you to provide us with a roadmap so that Sophie and other children and young people awaiting this surgery can have some hope, some relief and some prospect of early surgery Deputy Macdonald raised the very, and I must say to pay tribute to Sophie Redmond and her courage it's very very difficult not to have clear timeline to an urgent operation and I certainly I inquire with the Minister of Health, Stephen Danley to see what we can do in Sophie's case Obviously COVID-19 has impacted in terms of the capacity of our children's hospitals to do the surgery and on top of what were delays prior to that but they had been improving but they hadn't met their four-month targets and I will engage with the hospitals here to see what can be done in terms of accelerating the surgery In my view every effort must be made to facilitate children like Sophie who need their surgery to get it when they need it If that means procuring the operations In the area of scoliosis it is an issue of skilled personnel being available and the right personnel being available to do the surgery that's an important consideration and also given the other complications in terms of the requirement for knee surgery I'll certainly check that out for Sophie if you can send out the details to me and we'll certainly do everything we possibly can to help her Thank you Thank you