‘This is your legacy’, Cork mother of disabled daughter tells Taoiseach

By Gráinne Ní Aodha, PA

A Cork mother has confronted Taoiseach Micheál Martin about the healthcare treatments available to her daughter Katie, who has cerebral palsy.

Antoinette Burke said Katie, 18, could get life-changing but expensive surgery in the US.

She said that if her daughter had received the operation at the age of four, she would not need a hip replacement now.

She confronted the Taoiseach as he arrived for the Fianna Fáil think-in in Cork and said she had first contacted his office 15 years ago.

She told the Taoiseach that her daughter has hip dysplasia, a retroverted pelvis, a twisted femur and that one leg is shorter than the other.

“Nobody in this country will do anything for her, Katie needs help, and I can’t stand by when you are all standing here, you’re going in there to talk about healthcare and this is your legacy,” she said.

“This is 15 years on the 24th of this month that Katie will be waiting on surgery.”

Ms Burke said she had requested meetings with Tanaiste Simon Harris and Health Minister Jennifer Carroll MacNeill about her daughter’s case.

Mr Martin told her that “for some reason, the clinical consultants have made a judgment”.

This case has been ongoing for some time from the file, and there clearly has been disagreement in respect of clinical decisions on this and that makes it very difficult, from a political perspective, to overly interfere and sort of instruct doctors to carry out surgery

Chief Whip Mary Butler offered to take Ms Burke’s details and was told that she was informed about the case in the Dáil two years ago.

“I’ve been contacting Micheál Martin’s office since 2010, and it’s only the last year that we’ve got a response, and it’s from his secretary, it’s not from him,” Ms Burke said.

“Pat Buckley from Sinn Féin has brought Katie’s case up three times in the Dáil, and every time it’s ‘leave it with me’, ‘leave it with me’, ‘leave it with me’.

“I needed some way to tell him because I don’t know if his secretaries are telling him when I’m sending emails in because they probably get hundreds. When I saw it this morning, I said ‘I’m going over, he needs to know’.”

Mr Martin said that Katie’s case was not “necessarily emblematic” of families who have to fight for disability services.

“What it could reflect though, is the relationships between the clinical world and families and parents,” he said.

“I read the note that Antoinette sent me there, and there’s been a lot of interaction with very, very senior consultants in this field, in paediatric surgery, particularly orthopaedic paediatric surgery, who – apparently, from that note – are saying that they didn’t believe that surgery was the right course of action, and they either refused or took a decision not to do it on clinical grounds.

“But I would have to explore that further with the consultants concerned.

“It’s a very, very difficult case for a mother, and obviously the struggle and the journey for that family has been a long one from the day the lady was born and born prematurely, and has been engaged with services on an ongoing basis.

“It is a very, very difficult and painful journey for families, and families and mothers want the best for their child. I understand that fully, and mothers and fathers will do everything for their child, and that means, at times, very difficult engagements with consultants and clinicians.

“I think clinicians make their best judgments in respect of the timing of surgery, and I’ve come across this in many cases where people are anxious to get the surgery, clinicians are saying ‘not yet’ or ‘we don’t believe it is clinically justified’.

“On the other hand, if surgeons believe that they can’t do it here, there is a treatment-abroad scheme, and I’ve often referred parents myself through the treatment-abroad scheme, and it has been effective.

“But again, it needs sign-off from international clinicians before you can be treated abroad under the treatment-abroad scheme. And I always say to professionals and to all of us here, that we have to always try and look at these cases through the prism of the family and the mother and father and the child.

“But this case has been ongoing for some time from the file, and there clearly has been disagreement in respect of clinical decisions on this and that makes it very difficult, from a political perspective, to overly interfere and sort of instruct doctors to carry out surgery.”