‘I would have operated if girl was a private patient’

A top paediatric consultant who delegated a child’s operation to another surgeon told a medical inquiry into why the child had the wrong surgery first that he would have operated on her himself if he had known she was a private patient.

“I was not aware of the status at all,” said Prof Martin Corbally, who was a consultant in Our Lady’s Children’s Hospital, Crumlin at the time of the mix-up.

The two-year-old ended up having two operations on her mouth on the same day in 2010 after the wrong procedure was carried out first.