Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I had hoped I had explained. I obviously did not but I will try again to explain the situation as I did earlier. A decision was taken in 2015 as part of a package of patient safety measures I announced, many of which have now happened. I have listed some of the measures that happened over the past two years. A lot has been done. At the time it was my intention to do mandatory open disclosure at the same time as voluntary open disclosure. Having taken advice from the Chief Medical Officer and from my officials, who had consulted with stakeholders, a decision was taken to do voluntary open disclosure first and mandatory open disclosure for serious reportable incidents at a later date. That is in the programme for Government. We put this into the programme for Government and it has been in the programme for two years. As I mentioned earlier, the Joint Committee on Health examined this matter only in the last year. It listened to all the stakeholders and considered the matter. This all-party Joint Committee on Health also recommended that we should do voluntary open disclosure first and then mandatory open disclosure for serious reportable events at a later date. This is what we are doing.

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