Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I do not think a clarifying note will do it because there is a potentially very significant liability being placed on the providers to state that they are "satisfied" there is no reason intending parents should not be able to proceed. Medical professionals have no way of establishing that. On what basis do they say they are satisfied? A lot of the groups would have no difficulty with Garda vetting, for example. An Garda Síochána has access to PULSE and can conduct background checks and so on, whereas medical professionals are not in a position to do that. However, by stating that they "satisfied" they are leaving themselves liable to a claim being made against them about something that they have no means to establish. That is a very high bar to set. It is very prescriptive. It is not the principle of doing background checks that people are objecting to; they do not have a difficulty with that but those checks need to be done by an individual or agency that is capable of doing them. This goes further than just requiring a clarifying note. The Minister said that the term "aware" is not sufficiently strong and that is fine but there has to be something in between a statement that a medical professional is "satisfied" or is "aware". The former is a very strong statement for them to have to make without being able to satisfy themselves or to access the information that would satisfy them. This could be quite an obstacle. It is certainly putting a lot of medical professionals into a very dangerous or challenging situation and the Minister needs to look again at the wording on this.