Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Obviously, the proposed Bill represents a cultural change for clinicians, doctors, nurses and everyone involved in the clinical world. It is a very welcome change, but it could be a very scary change. A breakdown in the information flow between treating clinicians and the women who were affected was essentially at the heart of the CervicalCheck scandal. For a variety of reasons, the treating clinicians refused to share the audit results with the women involved, or did not feel comfortable doing so. We heard from Dr. Scally that international evidence suggests that this can be partly attributed to reputational damage for the hospital or acute setting, to damage to staff, and to legal risks or concerns and so forth.

Given that the provisions of last year's Bill and the proposals in this Bill represent a move towards a change in the culture so that mandatory disclosure by clinicians is required under law, is Dr. Holohan satisfied that the supports which will be needed by those clinicians will be in place so that mandatory disclosure can be done in the right way? In a briefing on the day his report was launched, Dr. Scally made the point to us that mandatory disclosure can be very damaging if it is done in the wrong way. Is Dr. Holohan satisfied that the legal protections are in place, that the training will be in place and that all the other supports which are required for mandatory disclosure to work properly will also be included as we require our clinicians to disclose?