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

Yes, we are committed to establishing a commission of investigation. I do not want there to be any ambiguity about that. Members have a lot of faith in Dr. Scally. He has done a good job so far and many of the women with whom he has been in contact have a lot of faith in him. He has asked that he be allowed more time to conduct his scoping inquiry. It is appropriate that we allow him that time, particularly because he wants to engage individually with more of the women affected and their families. Of course that is going to take a bit of time. I have not spoken to him personally, but Dr. Scally has said to the Government that he believes that he can finish this work by the end of the summer. We should allow him to do that. This is a scoping inquiry, which will get to a lot of the facts and make a lot of recommendations, which we can then implement immediately. We will then move on to the commission of investigation. Even if we were now to decide to fold the work into a commission of investigation, we would still need a scoping exercise anyway. That has been necessary in the past. The best way we can get answers, results, recommendations and action quickly is to allow Dr. Scally to do what he has been asked to do by the end of the summer and allow him to produce his recommendations along the way, which he is doing. My apologies for going over time again.

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