The situation facing parents and guardians of children with scoliosis who are waiting for corrective surgery is incredibly difficult and that is before we take the excessive waiting times, cancelled surgeries, abandoned action plans and broken promises of the Minister and Government into account. Recently, parents who are part of the scoliosis advocacy network have raised concerns that the HSE is managing the waiting list. They believe this is done through the issuing of letters asking the parents whether they still seek an appointment for surgery for their children which gives them an impossibly short window in which to reply. This means they are removed from the public waiting list because they cannot reply in the time that is allotted and I am sure the Taoiseach will agree that this is worrying, or maybe he will not. Can he confirm that this practice will stop, that we will see the added investment that is required and that there will be an immediate corrective surgery action plan with definitive times and commitments so that we deal with this issue once and for all and that we no longer have to have a situation where children wait for up to three years for their first appointment and assessment?

I thank Deputy Pearse Doherty for raising the issue. Specifically on the validation of waiting lists, I will check to make sure they are in accordance with the National Treatment Purchase Fund, NTPF, protocols but the NTPF, as a statutory agency, sets down strict protocols on the rules that should be followed to ensure accurate waiting lists. We have made significant investment in the area of scoliosis. In the last budget there was €10 million more of an investment in paediatric orthopaedic surgeries. This will see additional recruitment which is already under way in terms of an additional consultant post and importantly we have been working with the advocacy groups and the clinicians to put a new scoliosis co-design plan in place, which I expect to be published in the coming weeks.