Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank all colleagues across the House for their contributions on the Bill. It has been a useful and important session so far. I welcome the broad support that has been indicated for the Bill and for the extension of time. I join colleagues across the House in welcoming Vicky Phelan back from the United States. I acknowledge, as I and many of us have before, the huge contribution she has made to this issue from the start.

I have listened carefully to the speakers and will consider the issues raised. I will revert to colleagues on specific issues raised, including the audit raised by Deputy Connolly and other issues. I would be glad to update the House, or the health committee if that is appropriate, on the progress of the tribunal in as much detail as is useful.

The central purpose of the Bill is to extend the period for receipt of claims by the CervicalCheck tribunal. It will ensure women eligible to make a claim to the tribunal have adequate time to consider whether they wish to do so. In my opening remarks, I explained some of the reasons an extension to the deadline is considered necessary. They include the pause in establishment. That was an issue last year. It should not have gone the way it did. There was no bad faith intended. A statutory instrument was lodged which, it turned out, could not be stopped under the law of our land. It started a time period.

The moment I found out it could not be stopped, I personally phoned several of the people who have been referenced in the Chamber today to say that the statutory instrument is what it is but I was giving a commitment that day that nothing would commence in any meaningful way until there was a lot more engagement. Today's Bill is about honouring that commitment. I gave a commitment personally that whatever period we needed, we would extend the time period of the tribunal by that amount. Indeed, the Bill extends it by an amount further than that because there were then other issues, as we discussed, one being the cyberattack and another being the huge disruption that was caused by Covid. We spent approximately two months after that point going through the various issues, many of which were raised again today.

It is important to acknowledge, as Mr. Justice Meenan did in his report, that the tribunal is not a redress scheme. I acknowledge that the tribunal is not exactly what the 221+ group wanted it to be. There was a lot of engagement in October and November with the group and, indeed, here in the Chamber on these issues. I would like to stress again that my only interest was, and is, in establishing a tribunal, within the bounds of the law and what is possible, that does as much as possible for the women and families affected. There is not a single Member of the Oireachtas - in the previous Dáil, where this came to light and where we passed the Bill, in this Dáil, or in the Upper House - who would not want this to be pushed as far as is possible. I want to re-emphasise that.

I looked into the issues at great length, as did the Department, the Attorney General and the Cabinet. This was discussed at several Cabinet meetings and the question was asked again and again as to whether we can do more and push further. Can we do more on recurrence, the statute of limitations and the different asks and guarantees that were very reasonably being asked for by the 221+ group? Where we got to, and I am very happy to go into some of the detail because it is important, was we brought it as far as is possible to bring it, partly because of the Constitution. We cannot constitutionally change the statute of limitations retrospectively. We cannot do it under our Constitution. We found another way, which was the next best way. I personally wrote to all of the women and families eligible to say that if they were in one of the groups that may be statute-barred, there has been engagement, they should lodge their claims and there is a very reasonable argument they can make, because of Covid, as to why they might have missed the High Court deadline.

Another point that was raised again today was one I supported when it came up in the legislation. I remember the debate around recurrence. I still think it is a very reasonable request for everyone, whether in regard to CervicalCheck or any other issue, that if there is recurrence, one could go back and say, "I had a recurrence of whatever this may be and I need more financial support because of this." Every Member of this House is sympathetic to that ask. It is a very reasonable ask. It is not that I, the Government, the Department of Health or anyone else did not want to accede to that. I think we all accept - certainly, most Members of this House would accept it - that, under Mr. Justice Meenan's report, the tribunal is voluntary for the women and for the laboratories. We cannot legally compel them not to avail of the High Court.

A few things would happen if we brought in recurrence. The first is that the representatives of the laboratories would walk out the door and simply go to the High Court. Under the law of the land, the High Court does not do recurrence like that. The way the High Court deals with it, and the way the tribunal would deal with it, is to factor it into the initial settlement amount. Even if people went to the High Court and somehow it was facilitated in this other way, which it cannot be, what would happen? First, the initial amounts would be lower because those initial amounts include the possibility of recurrence. What else would happen? Let us say there was a recurrence three, four or five years later. People would have to go back to court and the laboratories would be allowed to say, "Well, hang on a second, there may be no link between this occurrence and what happened previously." The women and families might be asked to go through it all again.

I promise the House that if we, as a Government, could have done what was asked, we would have done it. It is not that anyone did not want to do this. We pushed and pushed as far as we could. I am the first to acknowledge that we were not able to deliver on everything that was asked, but we delivered on everything we could deliver on and we set up the tribunal. That is where it stands and that is the position the previous Government took. We all, or certainly most of us, voted in support of the legislation, even though we debated exactly these issues in 2019. The advice is still the same. I hope colleagues will accept that these decisions were made in good faith and every effort was undertaken to push each of these issues as far as they could be pushed.

The tribunal has received claims and it is a small number of claims. Obviously, we would like there to be more claims. What is happening is that a lot of people are waiting to see what will happen with these initial claims and reserving judgment. One could not blame anyone for doing that. I know that some of the claims in the courts have been waiting for several years, while the tribunal provides that a new claim will come to hearing in 30 weeks and a claim transferred from the courts can be heard more quickly than that again.

Before we move on to Committee Stage, I thank colleagues again for their contributions. I would like to put on the record that I take issue with comments made by Deputy Verona Murphy with regards to Dr. Holohan and his motivations. They were entirely inaccurate and unfair and he is not in any position to address them. The Scally report deals with those issues and I hope the remarks can be withdrawn. I do not think they were right and I want to take issue with them. I thank colleagues for their contributions. As I said, I am very happy to come back. Colleagues are asking very reasonable questions about the tribunal and details around it. I am very happy, at the health committee or in the Chamber, to have that discussion at a later date.

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