Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I am fully supportive of that. My officials are meeting the Irish Kidney Association next week to go through all of their amendments in detail. My position is that we should take on the ones we can. There will inevitably be some where there may be technical reasons we cannot, or there may be a difference of view. Some of this is a judgment call. If we take the example of opt- in versus opt out, as I understand it, the association's position is exactly as the Deputy has articulated, which is that if there is an opt in, where I have and I am sure most of us have on our driver's licence the code that says we have opted in, then it is much easier, perhaps, for the family to say "Yes" because there has been a stated preference rather than an absence of a stated preference to opt out. The officials raised with me that while that may well be true for those who are on the opt in register, for everybody else, which is a great number, would families consider that the fact that they had not actively opted in mean that they are passively opting out, in a manner of speaking and could we end up with having less donations? There is no right answer to that and these are exactly the kinds of issues we want to tease out.

We are all lined up on the policy objective which is dignity, respect, consent, transparency and then, within those parameters, that as many organs are available as possible for people who are waiting for a transplant. I will certainly arrange a committee briefing and my understanding, Chair, is that Report Stage is not scheduled in this Dáil session, so that gives us some time.

By agreement with the committee, I will ask the officials to meet the representatives of the Irish Kidney Association, and to come to a position on that and, hopefully, there will be full agreement. There may still be some places where there would be different views, but to then provide a full technical briefing to the association so that we can run through the full list of its amendments, and then the amendments I am proposing to bring forward, if that works.

Specifically, to address the issue of the disposal of organs for the Deputy, when we are talking about Cork, I express again my sympathy, as we all have, to the families involved. What happened should not have happened at all.

Two levels of protection will be in place. The legislation provides protection and the regulations will also provide protection and, therefore, we are not asking for a leap of faith from the Oireachtas for those protections to be in place. Under the Bill, family consent will be needed for any arrangements relating to burial, cremation, return or retention. What happened in Cork under the Bill could not happen again without the express consent of the families. That is the first layer of protection.

As the Deputy said, there will also be detailed regulations in place to govern some of the operations of that. Critically, the Bill itself will rule that out without consent from the family.