'Fear, distrust and embarrassment': why children's healthcare in Ireland is in crisis

Children operated on when there was no need; industrial springs being used instead of approved medical devices; a doctor diverting children to his own private clinic leading to them facing dangerous treatment delays; and a poisonous work culture on the wards – these are some of the issues that have emerged in our children’s hospitals.

And that’s before the not so little matter of the massive budgetary and time overruns that plague the unfinished national children’s hospital.

The body tasked with overseeing the healthcare of the nation’s children is Children’s Health Ireland.

It was founded in 2019 and in just six years has faced a mounting number of controversies and scandals.

Questions are now being asked about the ability of CHI to do its job.

And that’s a job that will get all the more complicated when the children’s hospitals, each with their own culture and way of doing things, have to merge under one roof when the new hospital opens.

CHI is funded by the HSE and answers to it, so what role does the State’s healthcare body play in all this? And what is Minister for Health Jennifer Carroll McNeill going to do as CHI lurches from crisis to crisis?

Irish Times health correspondent Shauna Bowers explains.

Presented by Bernice Harrison. Produced by Declan Conlon. 

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