Dr. Gearóid Ó Cuinn:

We welcome the support. We agree that certain things should be of concern. Apart from what I have presented to the committee, we are also very concerned about the lack of transparency. Organisations such as Médicins sans Frontières, Physicians for Human Rights and, critically, the UN Special Rapporteur on torture cannot get into Bahrain, so how do we know what is happening within the facilities and whose word do we take on this? One of the problems we have discovered as well is that documenting the abuses is getting more difficult. We recently participated in a campaign called End Impunity which finished two days ago. Some of the members we worked with have subsequently been arrested. Others have gone into exile, including Yousif Saif who is the head of documentation for the Bahrain Center for Human Rights. We believe the violations will soon become invisible, but that does not mean they are not ongoing. There must be an effort by the Medical Council to systematically find out what is happening.

Lastly, with regard to what we have seen from RCSI senior staff who have commented in the Irish media, I have given members of the committee copies of some news items. News item No. 2 refers to extremely anecdotal evidence of their awareness of what is happening in the facilities. They quote what they have heard from some of their medical students, but we have heard nothing. What we have documented is that people are afraid to speak out, especially students who have invested so heavily in their medical careers. Something programmatic must be done to ensure that Irish standards are really being maintained in this essentially hostile environment.