Ms Rachel Power:

Initially, the delay arose because the State appealed her High Court case. That continued for about two years or more while the State was pursuing an appeal because it did not take responsibility for the breach of the European Convention of Human Rights. It took much lobbying and campaigning on behalf of FLAC for the State to drop the case.

I refer to the High Court judgment itself. Judge McKechnie expressed much frustration in the 2007 judgment that nothing had been done by the State in the previous five years because there had been a European Court of Human Rights decision against the UK on the very same point, with almost identical legislation. The State had five years to do something and it chose not to. Again, Judge McKechnie was emphatic in his judgment in saying that he hoped the State would follow the UK in implementing the change quickly but that did not happen. Successive Governments, right up to 2015, promised change but it did not happen. There are many opinions as to what the issues were, namely, various conservative legal or medical opinions on the issues, bureaucracy or the fact the issue was not urgent for the Government of the day. I do not know if that is a question we can necessarily answer because that was the decision of the State over those eight years.