Ex-health minister's last act was ordering spinal surgeries abroad for children on waiting list

The care package offered by the HSE to each child includes travel, airport and hospital travels, travel insurance, accommodation, and daily expenses

Former Minister for Health Stephen Donnelly acknowledged that while it would be 'preferable' to offer children in Ireland 'timely access to care here... the overseas option has provided much-needed additional capacity'.

Former health minister Stephen Donnelly ordered the HSE to offer spinal surgeries abroad to all children who had been waiting for longer than four months in one of his last official acts in office.

Mr Donnelly wrote to the chair of the HSE Ciaran Devane on January 21, two days before the new Government was formed, instructing that all 54 such children who had been waiting for surgery should be offered the option of treatment in either New York or London.

In the correspondence, Mr Donnelly noted that other children had already been given the same option at either Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital in New York or Great Ormond Street Hospital in London, with “overwhelmingly positive” results.

He acknowledged that while it would be “preferable” to offer children in Ireland “timely access to care here... the overseas option has provided much-needed additional capacity”.

Mr Donnelly said he was unhappy that, while the lists of children awaiting spinal surgery for more than four months had fallen by more than 30 since the previous January, the backlog “has not yet been fully addressed”.

“I am disappointed that the figure is not closer to 20, as was projected by the Paediatric Spinal Services Management Unit in CHI (Children’s Health Ireland),” he said.

Mr Donnelly also directed that each offer of care should be made with the aid of each child’s CHI consultant, but added that the family should have the option to avail of the offer regardless of the consultant’s opinion.

Funding for the offers should be sourced from the “considerable sums” allocated to the department’s waiting list action plan, including if necessary funding stemming from the National Treatment Purchase Fund, he said. 

Mr Donnelly lost his Dáil seat in Co Wicklow at last November’s general election.

A spokesperson for Children’s Health Ireland said that just 16 children have availed of the offer for care abroad to date. They said that cost details for that care were not immediately available.

The care package offered to each child includes travel, airport and hospital travels, travel insurance, accommodation, and daily expenses, CHI said.

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There are currently 112 children awaiting spinal surgeries on the CHI waiting list as at the end of January 2025. Some 72 of them have been waiting for longer than three months, while 15 have been waiting for more than one year.

The Department of Health said that €11.6m has been allocated to date for “international outsourcing initiatives” in order to provide relief to the waiting lists.

“This Government is committed to ensuring ongoing improvements in paediatric orthopaedic services to help reduce waiting times for children,” a spokesperson said. “Everything that can be done is being done to reduce the time that children are waiting for spinal procedures.”