{"id":24308,"date":"2025-09-16T05:43:13","date_gmt":"2025-09-16T05:43:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/24308\/"},"modified":"2025-09-16T05:43:13","modified_gmt":"2025-09-16T05:43:13","slug":"this-is-your-legacy-cork-mother-of-disabled-daughter-tells-taoiseach","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/24308\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018This is your legacy\u2019, Cork mother of disabled daughter tells Taoiseach"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Cork mother has confronted Taoiseach Miche\u00e1l Martin about the healthcare treatments available to her daughter Katie, who has cerebral palsy.<\/p>\n

Antoinette Burke said Katie, 18, could get life-changing but expensive surgery in the US.<\/p>\n

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

She confronted the Taoiseach as he arrived for the Fianna F\u00e1il think-in in Cork and said she had first contacted his office 15 years ago.<\/p>\n

\"AntoinetteAntoinette Burke, right, told Miche\u00e1l Martin, left, she had requested meetings with Tanaiste Simon Harris and Health Minister Jennifer Carroll MacNeill (Noel Sweeney\/PA)<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cNobody in this country will do anything for her, Katie needs help, and I can\u2019t stand by when you are all standing here, you\u2019re going in there to talk about healthcare and this is your legacy,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is 15 years on the 24th of this month that Katie will be waiting on surgery.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ms Burke said she had requested meetings with Tanaiste Simon Harris and Health Minister Jennifer Carroll MacNeill about her daughter\u2019s case.<\/p>\n

Mr Martin told her that \u201cfor some reason, the clinical consultants have made a judgment\u201d.<\/p>\n

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<\/p>\n

Taoiseach Micheal Martin<\/p>\n

Chief Whip Mary Butler offered to take Ms Burke\u2019s details and was told that she was informed about the case in the D\u00e1il two years ago.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been contacting Miche\u00e1l Martin\u2019s office since 2010, and it\u2019s only the last year that we\u2019ve got a response, and it\u2019s from his secretary, it\u2019s not from him,\u201d Ms Burke said.<\/p>\n

\u201cPat Buckley from Sinn F\u00e9in has brought Katie\u2019s case up three times in the D\u00e1il, and every time it\u2019s \u2018leave it with me\u2019, \u2018leave it with me\u2019, \u2018leave it with me\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cI needed some way to tell him because I don\u2019t know if his secretaries are telling him when I\u2019m sending emails in because they probably get hundreds. When I saw it this morning, I said \u2018I\u2019m going over, he needs to know\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr Martin said that Katie\u2019s case was not \u201cnecessarily emblematic\u201d of families who have to fight for disability services.<\/p>\n

\"AntoinetteMs Burke, centre, told Mr Martin, second right, back view, that her daughter could get life-changing surgery in the US (Noel Sweeney\/PA)<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat it could reflect though, is the relationships between the clinical world and families and parents,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI read the note that Antoinette sent me there, and there\u2019s been a lot of interaction with very, very senior consultants in this field, in paediatric surgery, particularly orthopaedic paediatric surgery, who \u2013 apparently, from that note \u2013 are saying that they didn\u2019t believe that surgery was the right course of action, and they either refused or took a decision not to do it on clinical grounds.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut I would have to explore that further with the consultants concerned.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt 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.<\/p>\n

\"TaoiseachMr Martin, centre, said he had often referred parents through the treatment-abroad scheme (Noel Sweeney\/PA)<\/p>\n

\u201cI think clinicians make their best judgments in respect of the timing of surgery, and I\u2019ve come across this in many cases where people are anxious to get the surgery, clinicians are saying \u2018not yet\u2019 or \u2018we don\u2019t believe it is clinically justified\u2019.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"Budget<\/p>\n

Ireland<\/p>\n

Budget 2026: Draught Rebate Scheme would be ‘vital lifeline’ for rural pubs<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cOn the other hand, if surgeons believe that they can\u2019t do it here, there is a treatment-abroad scheme, and I\u2019ve often referred parents myself through the treatment-abroad scheme, and it has been effective.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut 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.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Cork mother has confronted Taoiseach Miche\u00e1l Martin about the healthcare treatments available to her daughter Katie, who…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24309,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-24308","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24308","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24308"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24308\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24309"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24308"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24308"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24308"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}