Professor Denis Cusack:

I wish to clarify the matter of the jury. I agree with Senator Boylan. What I am saying is that we do not need a jury in every case. The question is whether it should be mandatory in the list. For contested or complex issues, I believe that there should be a jury and that we need to look at jury selection. Last month, I held an inquest into maternal death. I had a jury. I complimented the jury on its deliberation, its wisdom and its thoughtfulness. One particular juror, a lady, came up with extraordinarily perceptive questions. There is a place for juries. What I am asking is whether we need to look at the matter. Is it not better to have it refined?

As for information, there are three websites. Citizens Information is fantastic. Every time we get in a family we send them out a booklet. I do not wish to take issue with the 52 recommendations of the ICCL report. I commend them, and this is not in any way to diminish the importance of those families, but some of those cases go back 20 years, to a different era, and fewer than 20 cases are examined. During those 20 years there were 41,000 inquests, so we need to be very careful, without diminishing the importance to those families of the issues they faced, in drawing wide conclusions when we are talking about less than 0.1% of all inquests over 20 years. I was saddened by some of the things I read in the report and I hope they belong to a different era.

As for the regulations, we were there before England and Wales. As for the Coroners (Investigations) Regulations of England and Wales, to which Mr. Murray referred, there is regulation 28, and regulation 29 requires a report to be sent back. I refer, however, to Senator McDowell's Bill when he was Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform. Subsection 54(2) of that Bill states:

Where an inquest has addressed a recommendation to a Minister of the Government, a local authority or a statutory body, the Minister, local authority or body shall issue a response to the recommendation to the coroner concerned in writing no later than 6 months [I think that is a bit long] from the date of receipt of the recommendation and shall indicate the measures, if any, taken or proposed to be taken on foot of the recommendation.

We were there in 2007, so perhaps we could fine-tune that. They have excellent templates in England and Wales. I recognise Coroner MacLoughlin's inquest recommendations on maternal deaths. They made a great difference. I have sent the ten recommendations to the committee. They show the wisdom of the jury. Not only did we work with the jury but, in its absence, we also asked the legal representatives how they could help us frame recommendations, what they would like to see and what the family would like to see. We had an expert witness, Dr. Peter Boylan. I can mention him because this is in the public domain. We asked him what he made of this. Together we came up with ten recommendations. It was the jury that decided in the end which recommendations to make, and I commend the jurors' wisdom. We worked on the recommendations together. They were sent to the people I have listed. I always ask for an acknowledgement. I ask them to let me know of any steps they have taken. All I can do, however, is ask them that; I cannot require them to do so. That needs to be strengthened. We have that in models abroad and in the 2007 Bill. Again, I think we are at one. We have a commonality.