Dr. Cara McDonagh:

I have to admit I did feel quite aggrieved when that happened. They did not notify us and that was not acceptable but I felt very aggrieved they thought it was a suitable solution. The Minister, in his defence, said it was an interim plan so that appeal hearings could proceed. I felt it was the wrong approach. When the Supreme Court decision was made on many levels I was relieved because I felt that now they would do something and they would change the scheme. This was what I harped on at to the officials in the Department. I thought that surely now we were going to do something.

Throughout that summer and even in the autumn I was regularly in contact with them, even at times when I was not working. I was asking them when we were going to meet and start to look at this. Nothing happened. One of the officials told me the Minister was thinking of putting in the medical criteria, and that he had sought legal advice and it seemed to be an interim solution. There was never confirmation of this. I was sitting with my team in hospital when I found out. The occupational therapists, who liaise with community doctors about referring patients for the primary medical certificate, said it would be up and running again in January. I had no idea it was going to happen.

At that point we were all decided that we would not continue and that something had to be done. The only power we really felt we had was to say we would not do it. He appealed to us to reconsider on behalf of the people who would appeal and get the primary medical certificate. At that point I said we needed to meet him because we needed to know that he understood where we are at and what needed to be done. That was when the meeting happened. He gave us many reassurances and seemed to understand the urgency of it. We came away from that really feeling that something was going to happen but very little did happen. There was some background work happening but it seemed to be at a very slow pace. There was nothing yielding from it. We were not getting updates or documents. Any contact was through me making contact to ask whether there was any progress. Ultimately I felt I could not do it any more. It became harder and harder to sit in front of people. We made decisions after seeing people but we had to write to people after listening to their stories. We explained everything. We explain about the criteria but it became increasingly difficult. We felt we had no other recourse except to resign.