Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

This could be a difficult situation. It is readily recognisable that a person who has been diagnosed as having cancer and cured of the difficulty can have it come back subsequently at some stage. What is the extent to which it can be identified as a continuation of the previous condition? In the hepatitis C case, from memory, which is vague at this stage as it was a long time ago, everybody had the right to go through the tribunal first and if people were not satisfied, they had the right to go to court. Some conflict arose because advice was given to some of the patients that they should not go to the tribunal but directly to court. That caused a problem. The intent was to speed up processing the cases so the people directly affected could have some recognition of their condition and compensation for it. We must remember it was very similar in the sense that time was passing and there was constant worry. From memory, it did not work out exactly as was intended but it did resolve the most immediate problems, in the sense that it could not have been stated the cases were ignored; the first part of them was dealt with in any event. In some cases, the next part took on a longer life and was more difficult to resolve. I understand the case being made but there is a difficulty in determining whether we are dealing with continuation of the same condition or a new and totally different condition, which may be cancer and lead to the same problems but may not be directly linked. I am not certain.