Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Four agencies are mentioned in head 9. Those agencies are the ones which will be in receipt of the reportable incident. Will we have a very tight definition of what constitutes a reportable incident? With regard to who has ownership of the information, there is potential for two or possibly three of those agencies to be holding information at the same time. Who has ultimate responsibility for the safeguarding of that information? Where will it be stored? Who has responsibility for acting on it? With regard to the agencies, and to HIQA in particular, is it envisaged that the powers HIQA has under the 2007 Act will be enhanced or improved in any way to ensure that it can fully comply? There is a lot about monitoring but there is little about - and I hesitate to use the word but Dr. Holohan knows what I mean - enforcement. Will HIQA have any powers or will it simply record? If it is just going to be a recording and reporting mechanism with no follow-up the best use will not be gotten out of it. As I understand it, the named agencies will be setting standards. Who will be enforcing them? How is that going to happen? My reading is that there is going to be a fairly significant increase in the workload of the agencies involved. That is appropriate, obviously, but if they were here they would tell Dr. Holohan that they are stretched already. I can see he is smiling because of course they would say that but, as it goes, they are. Is it envisaged that additional resources-----