Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire (Cork South Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

It is, unfortunately, all too rare that debate changes opinion in this House but I welcome the fact that the Minister is listening on this occasion and has moved to an extent. It has been clearly a worthwhile endeavour to have the additional time to debate and tease this out.

The Opposition has had an opportunity to clearly articulate the position and the reservations that exist. I suppose it is not only this one reservation; there are several others and we will return to some of them. The Minister has comprehended that and is reacting. We will have to see in black and white exactly what that means and how that will work through the process.

In relation to the point about the anonymised and semi-anonymised audits, if we are moving to a greater element of candour at one end, we need to make sure the system is fully geared towards that at the back end as well. The semi-anonymisation is more in keeping with the spirit of that but it is preferable in more practical terms too.

The other point I would make - the Minister has acknowledged it to some extent in the context of the first proposed amendment he is considering - is that the circumstances here are different than they would be in other places. The public confidence issues are significant but within that, there is scope for this jurisdiction to be a leader. The Minister has expressed that desire on numerous occasions. We want to make sure that our learnings from everything that happened to the late Vicky Phelan, the late Emma Mhic Mhathúna and their families gives us the platform to have one of the best systems. In any decision that we are making, of course we need to be conscious of international evidence, etc., but we should also be conscious of our ambition for the screening programme.

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