By Drew Frayne
The horrific revelations of rusty, unapproved metal springs being implanted into the spines of vulnerable children in a public hospital should mark a turning point in Irish healthcare. But for the families affected, and for working-class communities across the country, this is not an isolated incident; it is the brutal consequence of decades of underfunding, Catholic Church ownership, mismanagement, and the State’s relentless drive to turn healthcare into a money-making scheme.
The recent HIQA report into orthopaedic and scoliosis surgeries at Children’s Health Ireland (CHI) Temple Street lays bare the appalling failures that led to children, including those with spina bifida, suffering serious complications and infections. One of the most shocking findings was the use of unauthorised steel springs, which eventually corroded, being implanted during spinal surgeries. These springs are intended for industrial use. At no point was consent for these experimental practices sought from patients or families. This is not just negligence; it is a barbaric act reminiscent of the most gruesome horror movies and the result of decades of systematic attempts to apply market logic to healthcare in Ireland.
Úna Keightley of the Spina Bifida & Hydrocephalus Paediatric Advocacy Group said, “There hasn’t just been “failures”, there’s been a gaping hole in the governance and standards across the CHI… The lid has not been blown off, this is only a small fraction of what parents and advocates have been saying has happened.”
Unnecessary profit-motivated operations on children
This scandal comes in the wake of revelations that unnecessary hip operations were performed on children at Cappagh, Crumlin, and Temple Street hospitals to bring in more cash. However, the responsibility doesn’t stop with one incompetent consultant, ‘Surgeon A’, performing ad-hoc experiments, or with one mismanaged hospital. The rot goes all the way to the top.
The HSE and the Department of Health have left children suffering on waiting lists. In 2017, the Ombudsman for Children exposed the damage being done by delays in scoliosis treatment, labelling it a “Human Rights Issue“. In 2022, the Government promised no child would wait longer than four months for surgery. Today, some wait for years. When €19 million was allocated to tackle those waiting lists, the money was not spent properly, staffing issues were ignored, and no accountability followed.
Meanwhile, consultants were rewarded for racking up private patients, while public patients languished in pain. This is the two-tier system in action: one rule for the wealthy, another for the rest.
History of medical abuse
This torturous approach to healthcare in Ireland goes back to the founding of the state and the HSE. In the 1960s, hospitals routinely performed symphysiotomies, a brutal procedure which uses crude manually-operated chainsaws to break the pelvis so women could have more children. These procedures left women, the majority in their 20s, with lifelong chronic pain, incontinence, walking difficulties, sexual problems and other issues. If cesareans were performed, they could only have two or three children, rather than the ten expected in Catholic Ireland.
These scandals are not just the result of incompetence. They are the result of conscious political choices. Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil, and now even the Greens and Sinn Féin, have shown they will not confront the logic of profit that underpins our broken system. Nor will they take on the powerful Catholic Church, which still dominates and controls our healthcare system. They have allowed private hospitals to flourish, and let the National Children’s Hospital costs spiral out of control – with the corporate construction firm BAM benefiting as a result, receiving an additional €107.6 million, out of which €5 million was awarded as dividends to BAM’s owner. Scoliosis campaigners have expressed outrage at the ongoing scandals, and deep concern for the ability of the yet-to-be-opened children’s hospital to bring any relief; Scoliosis Ireland founder said they are “extremely worried about the new hospital.”
This is capitalism in practice: cut services, outsource responsibility, reward the private sector, and let working-class people pay the price in pain and suffering. The ongoing effect of this profit-based approach to healthcare leads to the suffering of disabled people, and people becoming disabled due to unnecessary delays and malpractice.
Socialist Party member Stephen Morrison, who, along with his partner Gillian, has had to campaign for medical treatment for their son Harvey, who suffers from spina bifida, said: “I watched my son struggle to breathe and suffer in pain for years. He lost out on his whole childhood waiting for surgery. I can’t count how many ambulance trips, and I can’t count how many times I prepared myself to tell Gillian that our son didn’t make it. And the worst part about all this is that we have no other choice as parents but to bring our children to these hospitals. We still have to rely on this broken system.”
Full public inquiry now!
The Socialist Party demands a full public inquiry, not a whitewashed internal review, and real accountability for those responsible, including political leaders. But more than that, we demand system change. We call on healthcare workers to organise with whistleblowers and take any action they deem necessary to ensure this scandal is not repeated, up to and including strikes, work stoppages, and occupations.
Healthcare must be fully public, free at the point of use, and properly resourced. There must be a complete separation of Church and healthcare provision. That means taxing the rich and big business to fund the services we need, and expropriating Church-owned health facilities. It means ending the two-tier system and bringing private hospitals into public ownership. No child should ever suffer, let alone die, to protect the reputations of politicians, bureaucrats, or private consultants. We must build a movement to fight the political establishment that serves private interests and has failed generations of working-class people.
