Professor Trevor Duffy:

I will take the questions in no particular order.

There was a discussion about what other countries had similar systems of medical care and tort law. There are several systems in the developed world to address the problem, all of which are of varying complexity in terms of medical and law systems that are not necessarily comparable. We firmly believe we now have an opportunity and a responsibility to examine the matter in a constructive manner for the future, not to waste another ten years, as has happened since the clinical indemnity scheme was set up.

The profile of consultants dropping out of private practice is mixed and multifactorial, but, in particular, this issue is affecting procedural specialists. It is also affecting young specialists. Older specialists might choose to retire completely, whereas young specialists are choosing to leave the country or not to come back. That would be a major decision factor in making that choice.

More tellingly, as an organisation, we strongly support the concept of open disclosure. It is something that is being pushed strongly through the Health Service Executive. We have great concerns that legal or statutory responsibility or a duty of candour should be supported in the sense that it does not equate to an admission of liability on the part of the practitioner.

One member stated the system of medical negligence was primarily about redress for patients. Our experience is that generally patients are not looking for an adversarial or punitive process of redress; rather, they are looking to learn about and understand what happened to them and to ensure it will not happen in the future. In that context, the alternative mechanisms we have discussed and proposed are being examined as they offer a much better system that would be fit for purpose and fit with the values of the medical profession, namely, care and compassion and the culture of learning, which is at complete variance with the current adversarial system.