Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The relatives of those who died deserve the truth. Ultimately, that is what they are seeking and they have every right to it. We have to deal with the reality in this country of what happens when public inquiries are set up. What tends to happen is everyone involved goes and gets lawyers. People go straight to the High Court and get injunctions stating they cannot be questioned and have their good name damaged. One ends up with a very legalistic process. That is why we have had things like tribunals in the past. Unfortunately, many of them, as we know, have gone on for years and do not always do what the people who matter in them want, which is to provide them with the truth. They can take years and put a huge stress on people's lives.

A model we have seen that worked very well was in the case of the inquiry into CervicalCheck, which involved bringing in Dr. Scally. That was not a public inquiry but it is fair to say most of us in here thought it worked and delivered. Maybe it did not deliver everything everyone wanted but it delivered a lot and, critically, it did so quickly.

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