Dr. Tony Holohan:

On the question in regard to the audit data, while I understand the Deputy's point, the reality is that, for many practitioners, while their participation in audit is not a given, many individuals participate in audit willingly and for the right reasons. Nonetheless, it is a reality in clinical practice that people will look at the circumstances that have arisen in the past number of months and decide that the easiest thing is not to be involved in audit, as that is the safest way for them to avoid all of this trouble. That is exactly the kind of response we do not want to see, even if we understand it. We want people to participate in audit and to investigate what they are doing. The purpose here is to try to create as much protection for them and to try to give them as much encouragement as possible. That is the spirit of where we are coming from. We want to try to address some of the known impediments to people's participation in audit, for example, the culture of fear. Whether it is justified fear or not is another matter, but it is real fear that stops them from participating. We hope that can be addressed through some kinds of assurances. In particular, this legislation will, hopefully, give more assurance that we can increase the expectation that clinical audit is happening as an embedded part of the delivery of health care, which is not the case at present.