Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Scally report. It is excellent and extremely comprehensive. It has established many of the facts and truths of the CervicalCheck issue. I believe it has gone a very long way to answering many of the questions we have all had over recent months. The most important thing about the report is that it puts women and families front and centre in respect of this entire matter. Most importantly, Dr. Scally met with the women and families concerned. He listened to them and recorded their views and feelings. He really gave them a very strong voice in this whole process. Their experiences as recorded by Dr. Scally are undoubtedly a disgrace and raise many important issues for us.

The most significant finding and one of the most significant recommendations is the need for early legislation for mandatory open disclosure. It is extremely regrettable that, at the end of last year, the Government and Fianna Fáil conspired to delete the provision for mandatory open disclosure and, instead, as a result of a strong lobby, went with a voluntary disclosure regime. The shortcomings of that have been shown up very starkly.

I welcome the heads of the patient safety Bill. It provides legal liability in respect of disclosing basic information to patients. It is very important that we get clarification from the Minister that the legal liability will actually apply to individual clinicians and not to healthcare providers. That, I think, is the obvious interpretation of the heads of the Bill as they stand at the moment but it is not good enough. The Minister has to go much further than that.

This legislation is absolutely critical in changing the culture that Dr. Scally discovered. He has lifted the lid on a highly paternalistic culture which, as he said himself, was bordering on misogynist, in respect of many of the 30 consultants who were involved in this.

Stephen Teap referred to the God complex that was a factor in this matter. We are all too familiar with the God complex that some members of the profession display. Not only did these doctors fail to disclose key medical information to their patients but when, thanks to Vicky Phelan, this issue came out into the open, the attitude and approach of those consultants were disgraceful. There must be early follow through in respect of those clinicians engaging with and apologising to the women and families concerned, as recommended by Dr. Scally.

Dr. Scally found major shortcomings in CervicalCheck relating to governance, quality assurance, risk assessment, understaffing and accountability. This was only a microcosm of the HSE. Dr. Scally said that everywhere he went within the HSE, there were problems. Many of these issues have been addressed in the Sláintecare report but we need to ensure we take the steps recommended by Dr. Scally with the principal one being the reinstatement of the independent oversight board. It is important to point out that 88 Members of this House voted to abolish that independent oversight board five years ago. There must, therefore, be accountability in here as well in other places. The political mishandling of this issue needs attention. There was certainly competitive outrage and many of the comments and much of the behaviour of Members of this House, including members of the Government, did little to help the situation.

The issue is how the Government and Minister respond to these 50 recommendations. The Minister needs to tell us what mechanism he will put in place to ensure those recommendations are implemented swiftly and we keep the focus on this issue until they are implemented in full.

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