Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I asked earlier about the commencement of the Legal Services Regulation Act 2015, particularly in respect of section 32B. I think the Taoiseach indicated that the Legal Services Regulatory Authority has not been established but it has been established. It was announced to have been established in 2016. Section 32B is not dependent on the authority. The section concerns how to deal with clinical negligence issues. The very heart of the Vicky Phelan case and the cases before the State Claims Agency were cases against the State. The idea around section 32B was to prevent that kind of trauma and to give tools to the State Claims Agency to settle early, to provide for disclosure of medical and all other records and to work towards an early resolution. The Minister is obliged to work with other Ministers and other agencies to bring about pre-action protocols. This has not happened. It was suggested yesterday at a meeting of the Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach that if this section had been commenced, things might have been different. I am not saying definitively that they would have been different but they might have been different and a different approach might have been taken to these cases - from the State's perspective at any rate. We are good at empathy and rhetoric but very poor at seeing through what we have committed to in legislation. The Act was signed into law in December 2015. It is now May 2018. That key section dealing with how the State deals with people who have cases against it has not been commenced. Does that not go to the heart of the problem and cut across all the rhetoric we have heard in the past two weeks? We and the public need and are entitled to some explanation as to why that section has not been commenced. The programme for Government promised mandatory disclosure. That did not happen. I understand why people become sceptical about commitments that are made when the evidence is that the follow through leaves an awful lot to be desired even in respect of legislation passed by the Oireachtas.

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