Michael Collins (Cork South West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to speak on mandatory open disclosures in health service provision. I support mandatory open disclosure as a central part of the health service. The rights of patients or service users have to come first. When a person attends a health facility to receive care of any kind, that person expects a safe outcome. To be fair, most health workers at all levels do their utmost to give the patient the best quality of care possible but they are stretched to the limit with extraordinary workloads. People are grateful to hospital staff. Time and again one hears patients praising staff. However, sometimes things can go shockingly wrong and when this happens, as we have seen recently, there can be a tendency to circle the wagons and to protect the organisation. The rights of patients are forgotten or trampled on.

What happened in recent weeks indicates no accountability was shown from the top all the way down though the HSE. It was nothing short of horrendous. It still leaves a bad taste in the mouths of many people. The Taoiseach, Ministers and Ministers of State all circled the wagons. No one was going to be made accountable. The idea was simply to cover over the ever-widening cracks as the days were going on. How often do we see patients or families having to go to the courts for disclosure orders? The HSE drags them through the courts no matter how ill they are. This has to stop. Since voluntary open disclosure will not always work, I believe there should be a legal obligation to make an open disclosure to the patient or relative when there is an adverse outcome or when a serious incident has affected the patient.

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