Scoliosis inquiry will happen, but what next and how long will it take for it to begin?

Although parents of children with scoliosis and spina bifida have welcomed the statutory inquiry, the stuttering progress of the valproate inquiry should sound a cautionary note

Harvey Morrison Sherratt's parents, Gillian Sherratt and Stephen Morrison, during a Justice for Harvey March in Dublin city centre in August.

Cabinet will next week discuss a long-demanded statutory inquiry into care of children with spina bifida and scoliosis at Children’s Health Ireland.

Now that the Government has indicated the inquiry will happen, what next? It took five years for a non-statutory inquiry on valproate use to move from promise to reality, could this take as long?

The death of Harvey Morrison Sherratt, 9, in July, led to outrage about scoliosis care and sympathy for his parents Gillian and Stephen.

This, combined with over two years of controversies about care of these children, appears to have reached a tipping point politicians could no longer ignore.

A memo recommending the inquiry will go before Cabinet on Tuesday in a first step.

Ms Morrison Sherratt said on Thursday: “This is what we wanted, myself and Stephen as Harvey’s parents. We have been pushing for a statutory public inquiry because we cannot help Harvey anymore, unfortunately.” 

In a video on social media, she said parents’ groups involved — the Scoliosis Advocacy Network and the Spina Bifida Hydrocephalus Pediatric Advocacy Group — represent about 700 families.

“They are very much still caught up in the system that failed Harvey,” she said, adding this type of inquiry can compel anyone up to former health ministers to attend.

The four mothers leading these groups have been involved in advocacy for years. They are not naive to the challenges ahead even as they welcome this milestone.

Government sources are already talking about a considerable body of work to come.

Finding a chairperson could be challenging. One obvious choice, Selvadurai Nayagam from Liverpool Children's Hospital, is already overseeing a review at CHI. Anyone approached will need to commit to a long tenure. 

Valproate inquiry sounds a cautionary note

The stuttering progress of the inquiry into prescribing of anti-epilepsy drug valproate during pregnancy sounds a cautionary note.

This was first promised by then-health minister Stephen Donnelly in November 2020 after advocacy from OACS Ireland and Epilepsy Ireland. 

A chairwoman was appointed in June 2024 for a non-statutory inquiry but work only began in July 2025. 

Could this new inquiry have been avoided if CHI or the Government had met these parents half-way before relationships disintegrated?

Look back to early 2022 when the Spina Bifida Hydrocephalus Pediatric Advocacy Group began a campaign called ‘Paisti in Pain’ to highlight similar concerns.

The final straw for many families was a damning internal CHI report revealed in the Sunday Times this year.

Meanwhile, thousands of children receive care at CHI every day. Moe than 82,000 attended the emergency departments just in 2023.

The contrast between those successes and the care to be investigated has left many staff baffled as to how this situation was not managed better.

Many concerns raised in the media originate with frustrated healthcare workers whose voices were not heard internally. If they had also been listened to, could this inquiry have been avoided?

CHI will be integrated into the HSE by 2027 and could move to the new hospital site that year or later.

How will those moves impact or be impacted by such a wide-ranging inquiry? Many questions are yet to be answered.