Seán Fleming (Laois, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

At this stage Deputies Connolly, Catherine Murphy, MacSharry and O'Connell have indicated. This debate is a continuation of a topic that we discussed here last year. We did not to complete it because there was so much information being sought from the HSE on the number and category of claims. We sought information for the public watching by hospital in an effort to see whether hospitals had a higher risk. There was an assessment from the agency that were such a league to be published, then it could potentially be misleading or unfairly damaging to some hospitals just because of the number of people presenting. We agreed to not go into that detail because it could have other knock-on consequences. We then mentioned hospital groups as an issue. When the agency was here on the last day, we had quite a bit of information to receive on an ongoing basis thereafter and we said we would come back to it again this year. We are really only in a follow-through mode, somewhere along the line, from the HSE.

I have a question for our colleagues in the Department of Health and the HSE, more so than the State Claims Agency. What is being done to reduce the amount of medical negligence cases in the health service? We are here having this meeting not because the State Claims Agency has a cost of €3 billion but because of medical negligence in hospitals and other HSE footings. Really the question should start and begin with the Department and the HSE because that is the source of where all of the issues have happened. We have talked about this over the past year and we have been given a report today for today's meeting. Can somebody talk to me from the HSE's perspective on the proactive measures that have been taken? We heard here the last time that an incident can happen in a hospital, a report is compiled locally, which is not a ministerial one, but there is no proper mechanism to share the lessons and so on beyond that hospital in some cases. Sometimes it might have been the group. Sometimes, if a more serious event is being examined, the results might be circulated to all of the hospital managers but nobody seems to know whether they even have time to look at these things when they do get them. The number of claims increases every year. Our question is, in the first instance, more directed at the health service rather than the State Claims Agency. We will just take an observation from the witnesses at this stage and we will then move on to the substance of the matter.