David Stanton (Cork East, Fine Gael)
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As I said earlier, it is an interesting one. As Deputies O'Callaghan and Daly have said, there is a very small possibility that someone outside the health service provider, a nursing home doctor or whoever, not knowing about this, and if a family member were to bring it to his or her attention, obviously then he or she would have to make a call. We are talking about unintended and unanticipated injury where patients are placed at risk. We are not talking about an injury that actually happened, but a step beyond that where someone was placed at risk. In the vast majority of cases the hospital would know that. We should not lose sight of the fact we are aligning it with the WHO definition. It is important to link ourselves with top international standards here. We are talking about an incident that could have placed the patient at risk or did place the patient at risk but which did not happen.

Further up the line are the other issues covered in the other part of the section. Here the HSE or the health service provider having reasonable grounds to believe will be the person or organisation that has to make the disclosure. We are trying to encourage voluntary disclosure. If someone has reasonable grounds and if he or she discovers it him or herself, and in these incidents one would expect it would happen in the majority of cases, or it is brought to his or her attention where he or she did not know, that person has reasonable grounds and he or she has to volunteer to tell the patient that he or she was carrying out a procedure and an incident almost happened.

As we are linking it up with best international WHO guidelines, I would ask that we leave it as it is. I understand what the Deputies are trying to achieve, but it is already covered quite well here. It is an interesting and important distinction, but because of the WHO issue, I am inclined not to accept the amendments. I believe it is already well covered and I will not be accepting the amendments. The Deputies might consider withdrawing them.