{"id":53,"date":"2025-08-14T00:45:40","date_gmt":"2025-08-14T00:45:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/53\/"},"modified":"2025-08-14T00:45:40","modified_gmt":"2025-08-14T00:45:40","slug":"family-of-recently-deceased-boy-harvey-morrison-sherratt-to-meet-simon-harris-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/53\/","title":{"rendered":"Family of recently deceased boy Harvey Morrison Sherratt to meet Simon Harris \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

T\u00e1naiste Simon Harris<\/a> will meet the family of Harvey Morrison Sherratt (9) who died in recent weeks following years of suffering due to spina bifida and scoliosis.<\/p>\n

.<\/p>\n

He had been subject to delays in accessing urgent scoliosis surgery, during which time he experienced significant pain<\/a> and a reduced quality of life. He underwent surgery at the end of last year. <\/p>\n

He died on July 29th, although no cause of death has been established, his mother said in a post on X last week.<\/p>\n

Harvey\u2019s parents Gillian Sherratt and Stephen Morrison, from Clondalkin in Dublin, have been leading a social-media campaign calling for the resignation of Mr Harris following their son\u2019s death.<\/p>\n

In 2017, when he was minister for health, Mr Harris pledged that no child would wait more than four months for scoliosis surgery by the end of that year. In a post on X, Ms Sherratt called on the T\u00e1naiste to think \u201cas a parent of young children\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile you create memories with your children, I think about how memories are all we have left, and any future memories made will always have a void. While you kiss them goodbye for the day, I think about when I kissed Harvey goodbye for the last time,\u201d her post said.<\/p>\n

Mr Morrison said his son was \u201cunique\u201d, but said \u201cwhat isn\u2019t unique is the way he and other children and people with disabilities are being failed. It is up to us to stop it.\u201d<\/p>\n

They have called for a statutory inquiry into the handling of scoliosis in Ireland.<\/p>\n

\"HarveyHarvey Morrison Sherratt’s parents Stephen Morrison and Gillian Sherratt have called for a statutory inquiry into the handling of scoliosis in Ireland. Photograph: Collins <\/p>\n

It emerged last year that Harvey had been removed from Children\u2019s Health Ireland<\/a>\u2019s (CHI) urgent scoliosis surgery waiting list, without his family being informed. CHI was contacted for comment. <\/p>\n

It previously said it could not comment on individual cases but that waiting lists are \u201cconstantly changing, as children and young people have their surgeries and come off the list, new patients are added\u201d. <\/p>\n

\u201cImportant progress is being made every month,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n

A spokesman for Mr Harris said the T\u00e1naiste had spoken to Ms Sherratt, Harvey\u2019s mother, on Wednesday and they \u201chave agreed to meet in the near future\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe T\u00e1naiste has also sought, through the Minister for Health, a full multidisciplinary report on the timeline of care provided to Harvey.\u201d <\/p>\n

During a visit to Clonmel, Minister for Finance Paschal Donohoe<\/a> said Mr Harris \u201cdid all he could\u201d when he became aware of the needs of the family \u201cin terms of engaging with the Department of Health and HSE\u201d. <\/p>\n

\u201cI am very conscious that we have a family who have lost a loved one, and are grieving at the moment. They have had such a difficult experience and we have to respect that, and to allow them to make the points that they believe are important,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are still families who need more support, there is still more progress that we need to make.\u201d <\/p>\n

Sinn F\u00e9in<\/a> health spokesman David Cullinane<\/a> said the \u201ctragic and avoidable passing of Harvey Morrison Sherratt must bring an end to the neglect of children with significant medical needs\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cDespite the commitment made in 2017 by Simon Harris that no child would wait longer than four months for scoliosis surgery by the end of that year, as of July there are still 38 children waiting longer than six months just for an appointment date.\u201d <\/p>\n

Speaking to RT\u00c9 on Wednesday, Aont\u00fa<\/a> leader Peadar T\u00f3ib\u00edn<\/a> called for Mr Harris to resign over his handling of the case.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"T\u00e1naiste Simon Harris will meet the family of Harvey Morrison Sherratt (9) who died in recent weeks following…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":54,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[49,9,10,45,48,18,13,14,6,19,17,11,12,15,16,5,46,50,44,47,7,8],"class_list":{"0":"post-53","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-aontu","9":"tag-breaking-news","10":"tag-breakingnews","11":"tag-children-s-health-ireland-chi","12":"tag-david-cullinane","13":"tag-eire","14":"tag-featured-news","15":"tag-featurednews","16":"tag-headlines","17":"tag-ie","18":"tag-ireland","19":"tag-latest-news","20":"tag-latestnews","21":"tag-main-news","22":"tag-mainnews","23":"tag-news","24":"tag-paschal-donohoe","25":"tag-peadar-toibin","26":"tag-simon-harris","27":"tag-sinn-fein","28":"tag-top-stories","29":"tag-topstories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/54"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}