Is the Taoiseach aware of the growing number of women who are now coming forward and are survivors of a barbaric practice carried out in Irish hospitals between the 1950s and the early 1980s? This procedure, known as symphysiotomy, was inflicted on 343 women at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda. This is not the first time I have referred to what I can only describe as the mutilation of women who presented at that hospital in previous years. This practice was also carried out at the National Maternity and the Coombe Hospitals in Dublin.

My words are grossly inadequate to describe the pain and suffering these women have gone through and continue to go through. Their pelvises were sawn through, either immediately prior to or, in some cases, after the birth of their child.

Is the Taoiseach aware that this procedure was carried out, ostensibly because in these hospitals a strict Catholic ethos operated under the view that women should go through this procedure rather than have caesarean sections? The notion behind that thinking was that women, following caesarean sections would, God forbid, look at procedures of birth control or the option of sterilisation.

These women are calling for a full public inquiry into their suffering.

The Deputy's two minutes have concluded.

They are asking the Taoiseach and the Minister for Health and Children to provide the necessary resources in order that the full facts of what they suffered can be exposed and addressed. I add my voice to the call for him to respond positively to their request and their need.

The Minister for Health and Children tells me he has requested and, I think, received a report from the Institute of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists and he hopes to bring forward his conclusions arising from that. The chief medical officer of the Department has been working on this since April 2001. He is dealing with the matter.

The institute has advised that excellent results were claimed for the procedure at a time when caesarean section had a high mortality rate, due to sepsis. The institute says that, in properly conducted cases, complications were rare. However, from the 1950s onwards the operation for blood poisoning and obstructed labour was gradually replaced by modern caesarean sections. Enormous medical advances have been made over the last 50 years. I am advised that we must be cautious about judging procedures and interventions which were used in previous generations in light of current knowledge and experience.

The Minister has to deal with the report, which he has received. The chief medical officer will have to come forward with his views. The Minister has just told me he is prepared to convey the contents and some of the aspects of the report to the Deputy, who is obviously interested in the matter.

When my colleague, Deputy Morgan, last raised this matter in the House he got exactly the same reply from the Minister of State, Deputy Brian Lenihan, simply repeating what the obstetricians and gynaecologists have stated in their own statement of May 2001. The idea that we should not be asking questions about procedures employed in previous years, decades or whatever is unacceptable.

Will the Taoiseach instruct the Minister for Health and Children to respond positively to the appeal of these women? Will he acknowledge their pain and suffering and undertake to provide the necessary resources? Will he not depend on the obstetricians and gynaecologists who will have a particular view, but recognise that they do not have a monopoly of wisdom regarding the correctness of these procedures or other such interventions imposed on women, invariably against their will and in cases where many of them did not know what was happening? Will he so instruct the Minister for Health and Children and tell the House that he will support a full public inquiry into the obscenity that was visited on these victims?

I was not questioning the right of the Deputy to ask questions. I said we must be cautious about judging procedures and interventions used in previous generations in light of vastly increased knowledge and expertise.

They were questioned even then.

Deputy Morgan, this is Leaders' Questions. Aspiring leaders will have to wait.

It is your job I am after, a Cheann Comhairle.

Deputy Ó Caoláin will appreciate and accept that our one expert body, the Institute of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, which has been greatly responsible for improving our knowledge and expertise over generations, should not be ignored. I am not saying people should not ask questions about the period. That is why the report has been prepared.

That anyone suffered at any time is a matter of concern to all of us. We know how medical advancement has progressed dramatically in the last ten years. There was a high mortality rate resulting from caesarean sections 40 years ago but that is now a very rare occurrence, and thank God for that and for the expertise of the institute and its members. The Minister has the report and is prepared to discuss it with the Deputy if he so wishes.