Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

There has been a good debate and Fianna Fáil will support this amendment and indeed would have supported it on Committee Stage. I agree with everything Deputy O'Reilly has just said. If the amendment were made, the Bill would essentially state that the chief executive is not required to give evidence relating to something that may in the future be a matter for the courts or a tribunal. Within the world of healthcare, that is literally everything, so we could find ourselves in a very peculiar situation in which a committee is looking for information from the chief executive and he or she would just say no they are not required to answer any questions because everything said could at some point in the future come before the courts.

I will support the amendment. On reflection, though, there is an argument to delete the whole paragraph to be amended and I will explain why. Standing Order 59 is the one that, from memory, states that Members of the Oireachtas shall not comment on live legal proceedings in very specific situations - by my understanding it is where there is a jury involved and the discussions in the Houses of the Oireachtas may influence the judge or the jury. It is therefore a very narrow restriction on debate in this House. It is broadly interpreted in the House to the effect that we should not talk about live court cases, but my understanding is that we are not prevented from doing so. I have encountered this before. This is nothing to do with the Minister, Deputy Harris, but another Cabinet Minister refused to talk about Enet, the broadband contract, because the Department had lodged an appeal which would be heard in about a year's time and therefore, he said, he was prevented under Standing Orders from even discussing the issue. I looked into Standing Order 59 and it turns out he was in no way so prevented. I therefore make the point to the Minister, Deputy Harris, that even when it comes to matters which are before the courts, it is entirely in order in this House to talk about them, except under Standing Order 59, whereby we may end up influencing a jury or a judge. Say we wanted to talk about CervicalCheck, which we talked about this morning. One could argue that a chief executive could come in and say he or she cannot talk about CervicalCheck because it is before the courts. We could say we want to talk about patient safety in maternity hospitals but a chief executive could say he or she cannot talk about that because it is also before the courts. Healthcare being what it is, one can be pretty sure that when it comes to most issues the committee would like to discuss, based on this paragraph a chief executive could if he or she so wished say a case involving the matter is before the courts. We therefore do not have the mechanism to do this. I would like to see this provision removed because the danger that discussions in the Oireachtas might prejudice the outcomes of court cases is already covered in the Standing Orders of the House.

Anyway, this does not relate to the amendment. I welcome and will support Deputy O'Reilly's amendment. I am just making the point that all the amendment seeks to do is to delete ", or has been, or may at a future time be,". The fact that something was before the courts in the past should in no way allow any chief executive say, for example, in 1984 there was a case on this so he or she will not talk about it; that in the future, hypothetically, the organisation could be taken to court over anything he or she says or any of the issues discussed and he or she will not talk about them. I would go further. I refer to the issues before the courts now, just like CervicalCheck. We had four hours' debate on CervicalCheck this morning. This would allow a chief executive to say, sorry, but he or she cannot talk about CervicalCheck because there are multiple live cases before the courts.

I will make an additional point. I certainly did not understand Standing Order 59. I assumed it meant that none of us can really discuss issues that are before the courts. My understanding is that we actually can. We do so all the time. We talked about CervicalCheck this morning. I would therefore love to see the paragraph deleted. I do not believe it serves democracy or accountability at all. We will support Deputy O'Reilly's amendment.

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