Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 16 October 2019

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health

General Scheme of the Human Tissue (Transplantation, Post-Mortem, Anatomical Examination, and Public Display) Bill 2018: Discussion

Mr. Michael Conroy:

-----we could do better. The bit that is not resourced as well as it could be is the retrieval service because people have to retrieve outside their ordinary jobs. This causes a lot of disruption in hospitals for the people involved and because of knock-on effects on scheduled care, adding to queues and frustration among patients outside the transplant area. The idea is to bring in a dedicated organ retrieval service, made up of people whose first priority will be retrieval. They will work in hospitals in the normal way but when a retrieval opportunity comes up, that will be their first call. There have been tensions in hospitals over this but a dedicated person for this purpose would be a huge step forward. Our hope is that the legislation will bring pressures on us in terms of resources and we recognise that some necessary resources are coming next year.

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