Clare Daly (Dublin Fingal, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I agree with that. The Minister of State says there is evidence that the culture is changing. We all want to go there, but the debate we are having is the best way to go there. Given where we are starting, mandatory reporting is absolutely the best way. There is no definitive evidence to say that voluntary reporting will work. Take the example I gave earlier of the parents with the catastrophically injured baby. That operated at the time when we had this voluntary open disclosure policy in our hospitals. The parents went to three meetings with the health care provider. Despite that, they found that basic and crucial information about what had happened was withheld from them, and they only got it when they went to court. The reason they had to go to court was that there was no obligation under the present system for the health care provider to provide that. That is what we are trying to deal with.

One can think about the scenario outlined by Deputy O'Callaghan where there is a clinical team in an operating room, a nurse sees something untoward such as a near miss and wants to report it, and the doctors tell the nurse that it did not happen or try to bully her into silence. That one is mandated and has a legal obligation to disclose evidence of a near miss gives protection to employees who want to go in that direction. It is a good thing to protect diligent employees, and it will assist us in changing the culture. This is a key matter for us, and maybe we have talked it out for today.