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

Nobody in the Government, whether me personally, or anybody in this House, wants to see sick or terminally ill people dragged through the courts. Nobody wants to see prolonged legal cases going on for years. The public does not want that either. It is not in anyone's interest. It is not in the interest of taxpayers in the long run. It is not in the interest of the health service when it comes to confidence the health service, and it is not in the interests of patients or citizens. I have looked into this and am told by the National Treasury Management Agency, NTMA, and the State Claims Agency that 98% of medical negligence cases are settled or dropped and do not go to trial. Only about 2% go to a contested court hearing and those 2% often go to court because facts or claims are contested. There will always be a certain percentage where the facts or claims are contested. In Vicky Phelan's case, as the Deputy knows, the case against the HSE was struck out but the laboratory settled for €2.5 million without accepting liability. While there may not have been legal liability on the State, I think there was moral liability on the State to ensure that she got the information about the case that she should have got. There was a breach of duty to ensure that occurred.

How will we deal with these matters? The first thing is to ensure that more cases do not go to court at all. We can do that by building a culture of truth in our health service. That means open disclosure and many other things. Bear in mind that this is the Government that legislated for open disclosure in the Civil Liability (Amendment) Act 2017. That will be commenced before June this year. We will also legislate, as we indicated last year and in the programme for Government in 2016, for mandatory open disclosure in the most serious incidents, which are those that are considered to be serious reportable incidents. We need to reform our laws to make sure that legal cases proceed more quickly. Let us not forget that the legal profession can help with this too. Where something goes legal, there are two sides, and both sides need to work together to make sure that cases are not prolonged. We can do that in a number of ways. For example, pre-action protocols, periodic payment orders and mediation have been legislated for by this Government. In the past year or two there have been three major Acts, designed to do exactly what the Deputy says should be done, namely, the Civil Liability (Amendment) Act, Legal Services Regulation Act and Mediation Act, which were passed in the last few months. I saw an example described yesterday in the news of a case which was handled very differently, that is, the case of a young boy who had a birth injury who settled for €5 million. That was done by mediation. The sister described on "Six One News" last night how things can be and often are done differently.

On that patient safety office, I was the Minister for Health who set it up. There was not one before. When one does things, one needs to do them in a stepwise manner. It is not possible to make all reforms happen overnight but we are making those reforms happen.

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