John Dolan (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I have been elevated to the Lower House.

The Chairman's full apology for repeatedly and mistakenly referring to me as Deputy Dolan is very appropriate, as it is an apology from a doctor and an example of full disclosure.

Dr. Scally puts his finger on the problem. When it comes to the hard cases, it sticks in our craw to come out and say it. I thank the Chairman for his introduction, which gets me going. I also thank Dr. Scally and his colleagues for the work they are doing.

My remarks and questions relate to the position, comfort and status of girls and women in Ireland. There is something going on here that goes beyond what is in the eye of this storm. It goes to the heart of how comfortable, included and well-treated women and young girls are in this country. Dr. Scally spoke of ensuring this would become an increasingly rare event and said he was honoured to meet and talk to many of the women concerned and took great encouragement from their help and support. Those remarks need to be underlined and repeated.

Does Dr. Scally have a view on whether there may be governance and organisational issues that stretch from the Oireachtas? This committee deals with health and has a relationship with the Department of Health and Health Service Executive. While it is easy for us to talk about what happened elsewhere, everything that happens elsewhere is subject to oversight and responsibility.

No one would regard CervicalCheck screening or other health screening programmes as anything other than very positive developments. As time goes on, I expect there will be more of these proactive interventions to try to catch nasty conditions before they come our way. I am intrigued that despite our good motives, we have had unnecessary deaths and cases of near death, which have caused major anxiety? I would appreciate any observations on that.

Speaking about the issue of open disclosure, Dr. Scally stated that many of the attitudes displayed by clinicians have no place in medicine. He then spoke about attitude and culture and indicated he was hopeful that the culture would change. He said that open disclosure had to be the rule rather than part of a menu. What else will be necessary to encourage this change of culture? Dr. Scally spoke about collegiality being both a good and bad thing. This is evident in other areas of public service, including policing.

Dr. Scally spoke strongly on compensation being a core element, if I understood him properly. Should a compensation fund become part of the cost of providing a service? One will always hope that one does not fully expend it but it strikes me that if there is to be open disclosure and honesty, we must all be honest with people. This means saying that sometimes, even with the best will, honest mistakes will be made. We must have an upfront system that tries to remediate that.

Dr. Scally refers to the range of deficiencies he found. He made 50 recommendations and may have made a 51st recommendation this morning. We have had 25 or more years of tribunals, inquiries and scandals. It strikes me that this could, sadly, become another inquiry with a big report, which lays out all the issues. If Dr. Scally met someone at a bus stop or in a waiting room and the person realised who he was and asked him what are the three, four or five things that need to happen to turn this around, what would he say?

We have had a love affair with finding people and entities to blame and responsibility must be borne. However, when something like this happens we need to immediately start to right the ship in whatever way we can and get a better system in place.