David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 5:

In page 12, between lines 33 and 34, to insert the following: “(2) A health services provider shall make every effort to ensure that the patient and relevant person are informed as to the potential for engaging and sourcing a patient advocate and, where an advocate is chosen by the patient and/or relevant person, the advocate is included throughout the disclosure process as a relevant person.”.

This amendment places an obligation on the provider to provide information to a patient in respect of a patient advocate. That is very important because we know how difficult it can be for some family members to work through all of this. For someone who has no experience of advocacy or of how to navigate through what can be the maze of the HSE, the system, reporting systems and so on, the role of a patient advocate, as the Minister knows, is very important. With this amendment we seek to place an obligation on the provider to ensure that it is mandated to provide information to a patient on how to engage the services of a patient advocate, rather than simply leaving it to a patient to have to try to find all of this out, sometimes by having to employ the services of legal representatives and incurring more costs. It is to aid patients in accessing a patient advocate and placing an obligation on the provider to do everything possible to enable that to happen.