Brendan Smith (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank Dr. McDaid for his contribution. There are medical councils in each jurisdiction. It would be important that they would communicate the concerns of the physicians and medical professionals to their relevant health departments and governments. The representative organisations would have ongoing contact with their relevant government department on a regular basis. Regardless of the country it is important that medical professionals with the expertise and knowledge would make an issue of it with the relevant health authorities.

Mr. Matas referred to legislation not being extraterritorial. That is correct but there is a value in the European Convention against Trafficking in Human Organs that was adopted in 2015. The Irish Department of Health must introduce legislation to transpose those provisions into domestic law. All member states can transpose the provisions of that convention into domestic legislation. That is the value of the European convention.

What I said at the outset, and I am sure members will agree, is that we will communicate directly with the Minister for Health following this meeting, stating that we had a formal meeting with the witnesses in regard to the need to bring forward this legislation. I am sure it would meet with the approval of both Houses of the Oireachtas.

We will ask the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade to raise this issue as a specific item at a meeting of the Council of Foreign Ministers. Obviously, each Minister can table an item for discussion. We should encourage our Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade, Deputy Simon Coveney, to put this matter down for discussion and try to garner support among other member states as well.

I thank the witnesses sincerely for their contributions. They have exposed extremely frightening and troubling activities which are heinous crimes being committed against vulnerable people. Let me assure them that they have our support and we will be glad to pursue other ways that we can be of assistance.