Mr. Michael Boylan:

We believe the committee in its consideration of this problem must focus primarily on the needs of patients and the human cost and tragedy relating to loss of life and disablement caused by medical accidents which are preventable. Last week's proceedings seemed to concentrate almost solely on the financial, as opposed to the, human cost. There is a need to introduce a legal duty of candour to underpin and underscore an ethos of open disclosure when medical accidents which are preventable occur. The United Kingdom, following a long battle on the part of our sister organisation, Action against Medical Accidents, AvMA, introduced such a duty last November. I urge members, as legislators, to consider this in an Irish context. A duty of candour would make a huge contribution towards reducing the trauma caused by medical accidents. Ultimately, it would also reduce costs.

There is a need for doctors to learn from errors they make. No doctor begins his or her day intending to hurt anybody, but doctors do make errors. In order to learn from them, they must accept that they occur in the first instance. Unfortunately, there is a widespread culture of defend and deny which has the undesirable effect of poisoning the doctor-patient relationship. If errors are admitted to when they should be, doctors can learn and the doctor-patient relationship can be preserved in many cases. In cases in which an error has only resulted in modest injury, patients may not sue at all. It might be counter-intuitive, but it is the international experience that patients are very forgiving of doctors when there is candid communication at an early stage. What poisons the entire relationship is the putting up of unmeritorious defences.

It is already the case that too few patients are obtaining access to justice. That is the problem. There are 84,000 medical accidents reported to the State Claims Agency each year. At last week's meeting Mr. Ciaran Breen informed the committee that there had been 609 new cases in 2014. They represent a tiny proportion of the number of people who were injured in medical accidents. There are too few lawyers who specialise in this area acting for plaintiffs. On the other hand, as is only right, doctors have the best of legal representation. It is an unequal struggle for justice for patients and we would be opposed to anything which would make that struggle more difficult.

In the context of the presentation made at last week's meeting, the idea of reducing the damages awarded to catastrophically injured patients is completely objectionable to our members. For somebody who spends 40 years in a wheelchair, the cost involved comes to just over €200 per week. I challenge any member to say €200 per week for a lifetime spent in a wheelchair constitutes overcompensation. That to which I refer is not the solution to the problem.

In addition, the data provided for the committee by the Medical Protection Society, MPS, completely lack transparency. No details were provided of premium or investment income, nor was information forthcoming on the actual cost of claims to members of the MPS. Buried in one of the submissions I discovered that 238 claims had been made against MPS members last year. This figure was not included in its glossy report, but it can be found in one of the supplemental documents provided for the committee. The MPS has 16,000 members, against whom 238 claims were made last year. If that is correct, on average, this represents one claim per every 67 members. Something just does not add up. The MPS did not provide details of the total amount it had paid out; rather, it supplied a graph which I could not understand on which projections of future costs were made.

I will conclude by introducing one of our members, Ms Deirdre Courtney. Many of our members wanted to come before the committee to tell their stories. However, we could only select one. Ms Courtney is going to recount for members her story and that of her family and the struggle in which she engaged in her quest for justice.