Kate O'Connell (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

We want to spare women the court experience, as Mr. Breen said. There is a process preceding mediation. Consider the case of a woman who has an incident at birth and we will leave the infant out of the situation, we are only dealing with the mother. There are experts on the HSE side and the mother's side. I understand from the health committee meeting yesterday on the tribunal for the 221 women affected by CervicalCheck, there is a third layer of experts. I may have misheard the Minister, but the judge will have his or her own expertise. When we talk about sparing women, in practice a woman who suffers injury at birth and there is negligence must explain her entire case to her own legal people, medical people including psychiatrists, psychologists and everything else, and then to another equivalent group of experts for the defence on behalf of the HSE. We are not sparing women. That process involves manual and verbal examinations. We are not doing anything to spare women from the indignity of that sort of process. I understand why women would not want to seek justice because the current process is so invasive and intrusive. It is inappropriate to put women through that. An expert is an expert. Medical experts are bound by their ethics and their governing body. I cannot understand the need for two colorectal surgeons to examine a women's rectum to see how damaged it is. I do not know why we are doing that to people. Can Mr. Breen explain?