It is more than two months since my colleague Pádraig Rice first asked the Taoiseach about disturbing reports of an audit of hip surgeries on children at three separate hospitals. Back then, the Taoiseach said the audit process was in its final stages. That was ten weeks ago. The parents of the children involved have received no further information since. They have been told the audit is in its final stages for months. The Taoiseach repeated that same mantra yesterday and refused to provide any timeline for the publication of this report. In fact, he bristled at the notion that he would even be asked the question.

Let us be very clear: the audit is independent, but that does not mean the Government should be totally in the dark about when parents will finally get some answers. If it is, this raises further questions about the Government's competence and control of this scandal. We had the ridiculous situation yesterday where neither the Taoiseach nor the Minister for Health were able to tell us how many letters had been sent to families by Children's Health Ireland. These letters are not connected to the audit, we are told, and have been sent to families whose children were operated on over the past 15 years. The Government is entirely ignorant about how many families may even be involved. That is really staggering. Has anyone in the Cabinet thought of picking up the phone and asking Children's Health Ireland and Cappagh hospital how many letters have been sent or is the Government too busy trying to maintain plausible deniability about the crisis to ask these basic questions?

The Taoiseach has accused Opposition TDs of trying to politicise this issue. Would he accuse parents who are desperate for information of the same thing? We are trying our best to get information for them. I have been contacted by parents whose children may be impacted by this and who are deeply distressed. They watched their children suffer terribly through serious surgery and now they wonder whether the surgery was necessary at all. Did their children go through all that pain and trauma for nothing? The least they deserve is a date for when these questions will be answered. The notion that no one can provide an indicative date is not just implausible; it is insulting.

The Taoiseach hinted yesterday that he knows more than he is willing to say publicly. He said the audit may be published sooner than we think. Will he stop with the evasion and level with us? When will the families involved have the answers they need? When will the audit be published? When the Taoiseach was asked yesterday how many letters had been sent to parents, he did not know the answer. Getting an answer on this should be straightforward. It is simply not credible that no one would have this basic information. The Taoiseach has had the past 24 hours to find out. Can he now tell us how many letters were sent out to parents whose children had operations over the past 15 years?

Children's Health Ireland, CHI, commissioned the audit. This is a very serious issue. It is of very serious concern to both the parents of children and to children who might now be teenagers. The audit is in respect of the period 2021 to 2023 and relates to developmental dysplasia. The decision by CHI to commission an audit was made in order to have an independent look at it and make sure that if there was untoward behaviour or something wrong happened, it would be highlighted and the facts found. It is a mission to find the facts. Government has no objective in hiding anything.

The Deputy uses language which, I understand, from an Opposition perspective, he may want to use. I refer to words such as "insulting" and "staggering". No one is insulting anybody. There is no desire on my behalf or that of anyone in government to insult anybody. It is too serious for that. We are talking about children who have had operations. The least we owe to the parents and families involved is the facts. We need to be independent in how we procure those facts.

I have obviously not seen the final audit or anything but a draft report, apparently, was published. CHI felt parents whose kids had this operation in the past might be concerned, so it wrote a general letter to people going back over a long period. It did that with a view to trying to help to allay anxiety. Now, it is as if the number of those letters is the key answer to something. It is not, actually. The letter is quite general, from what I have seen.

That is not actually true. That is untrue.

Deputy, it is not your question.

Sorry, it is not your moment.

It is not true.

Please, Deputy.

The generic letter I have seen essentially states that it relates to a follow-up to surgery at Children's Health Ireland to correct developmental dysplasia and that an audit is under way. It also states, in terms of skeletal maturity-----

The Taoiseach is misleading the Dáil.

Please, now. This is not about politics, Deputy.

But you are misleading the Dáil.

I am not, now.

You are misleading the Dáil.

This is outrageous behaviour by you, now.

Deputies, please, it is not your question.

That is fine, sorry.

Deputy O'Callaghan is entitled to an answer. It is not the Sinn Féin Deputies' question.

And the Deputies will have time to come back.

You have been doing this since this Dáil began, and I ask you to stop because it is too serious. I have no interest in hiding anything - none.

I have the letters here.

Why would I? For God's sake, reflect on what you are trying to assert. I am as serious about it as anybody is. It is horrendous if anything wrong was done but we need to find out the full facts. That is what we want to do in terms of the parents and children involved. That is it.

Thank you, Taoiseach. You can come back in. Deputy O'Callaghan to respond.

The Minister asked CHI to please tell her how many letters are out there, but the context of the letters is as important as the number. The final point I would make is my understanding is that the audit will be ready - fairly imminently, I hope. I do not govern that.

Taoiseach, you are over time. I call Deputy O'Callaghan.

I cannot force the pace in respect of that.

Thanks, Taoiseach. The parents who have been in contact with me are deeply worried about the situation. They do not know who to turn to for information and are finding that very frustrating. They want a timeline on this. They also want to know how many letters have been sent out. The Taoiseach does not have that information at present. Is that the situation? He is not able to tell us. When will he be able to tell us how many letters have been issued? How, as Taoiseach of the country, does it take him this long to establish something as basic as how many letters have been issued? Surely that figure is known by Children's Health Ireland. Why is it not able to give the Taoiseach that kind of basic information straight out?

We need to tease that out. What are we saying about the letters that have been sent out? Yesterday a word was used, namely "recall". Once a number is announced, people will draw all sorts of conclusions from that number. My understanding is the letter has gone out to children who have been operated on, potentially as far back as 2010, or to parents in respect of a child. The important point is to get the audit published. CHI has been asked today by the Minister to publish the number in any event, as has Cappagh. This is because CHI and Cappagh are involved here. The core issue is the audit, not the number of letters sent out to a cohort of people going back over a number of years. The letter I have read is generic. Others may have got different letters. I do not know about that and would not have access to that. The bottom line is that I would hope we will have the audit before the end of next week.