Michael McDowell (Dublin South East, Progressive Democrats)

I know, and that is the point. We are dealing with a problem that has never existed in the past, where a volunteer offering first aid to someone else in good faith has been sued. Is it a good idea to address a situation that has never arisen in terms that would introduce the idea of people being sued for failure to offer first aid? I worry a great deal about that concept. We should not lightly go down the road of making failure to act actionable without carefully thinking out its implications.

My problem is with the Title of the Bill. I am told I would be hard hearted and not Santa Claus like if I did not accept it but I do not agree with the principle underpinning it. It is a two section Bill fraught with difficulty. It provides for different standards of care for people in almost identical scenarios. A humble paramedic owes a much greater duty of care to somebody he or she takes charge of at an accident scene while on duty than an expert doctor who comes across the same scene. The Bill distinguishes between doctors who are treating their own patients and patients of other doctors and it differentiates between a doctor who is on duty in a hospital and who finds somebody who has been brought to the hospital lying injured in the back of a car and the doctor who is off duty and is on his way home when he encounters a similar scene.

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