John Dolan (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank all of the delegates for their perspectives and being with us. I feel the need for a virtual moment to honour the fact people have died and have had their lives hugely changed. There are two parents here and there are so many others. I know from my own work in the disability area that some people got there for these reasons.

Mr. Ciarán Breen has a full understanding of the situation in which people find themselves. That said, the presentation by the State Claims Agency stated, "While acting in the best interests of taxpayers..." Taxpayers have a lot of skin in the game. They keep the whole show on the road and they have been under a lot of pressure. However, let us suppose the State Claims Agency's remit was to act, "in the best interests of the health and well-being of the people of Ireland". While the agency does not get to decide what are its terms of reference, I believe that is a significantly different place to come from. Mr. Breen might want to venture a comment on that.

Ms Murphy talked about the Canadian situation in recent years, the UK duty of candour and the Michigan experience. To what extent have those changes, and others like them, in any way impacted on Ms Murphy coming to her view? She also spoke about Dr. Rick van Pelt and his road to Damascus conversion, or at least it was not too different from it. It strikes me as an irony that he and many others were, in a sense, compelled to keep their mouths shut, and they are being told by the current system that the thing to do is to keep schtum, yet the view of the State Claims Agency and others is to let this be voluntary. Is there not a case to go down the road of a mandatory approach? If the place goes to the dogs in terms of claims, the State is well able to shut the door quickly if it needs to. Would that not be a better way to go at this time? We wear seatbelts and we do not drink and drive because of penalty points, not because we woke up some morning and realised, "I could die if I do not wear a seatbelt" or, "I could kill someone". It was that type of compulsion that led to people saying, "I should not even smoke in my own house, even though there is no law against it." Is it not possible that compulsion is the thing to wake up us lazy people and make us ask why we were not doing what we should?

I thank the delegates for attending.