Dr. Tony Holohan:

No. In both of those situations, I am talking about the disclosure to the patient. The piece we have added to this legislation since it was before the committee in 2016 is the requirement that, for a specified number of serious patient safety incidents, it will be mandatory to report those to the patient. It was already our provision for that to be mandatory in terms of reporting to HIQA and the State Claims Agency and it is the same list, but we have added an absolute requirement of open disclosure to the patient as well. This is in addition to the supports we have in terms of voluntary open disclosure.

Many comparisons have been drawn between policy, legislation and practice in Ireland and the duty of candour in the UK. Clearly, the UK is ahead of us - it is ahead of the rest of the world - in its legislative provisions. There is value in that for us from a learning point of view. The UK's duty of candour provisions do not extend beyond requirements on organisations. Our requirements extend not only to organisations and the duty on people who have corporate responsibilities within health service organisations, but also to practitioners. When this legislation is enacted, there will be a duty of open disclosure on organisations and practitioners, which goes considerably further than the UK's duty of candour.