Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank colleagues and, along with them, I acknowledge we are here this evening with this Bill because of Vicky Phelan and others who made a brave and difficult stance, including Lorraine and many others. They did something difficult and important.

This is about 115 pages; it is complex and important legislation. It expands HIQA’s remit into nursing homes and private hospitals and brings in mandatory open disclosure, the framework for the patient-requested reviews and the additions provided for through this evening’s amendments around mandatory information for patients. It is one of several important changes. The credit for those changes goes back to Vicky Phelan and the others who took a stance and, critically as colleagues said, continued to advocate and fight after that. Years of work has gone into it.

We now have HPV screening, HPV vaccines and the catch-up programme. It is important to say cancer survivorship rates in Ireland are going in the right direction. They are increasing. Our goal is to eradicate cervical cancer in Ireland. Patients going for screening is a part of that. Screening services are essential and the people I have met who work in those services are passionate and dedicated to making sure they provide the best possible outcomes for patients.

We are doing other things in this area. The Bill will go to the Seanad and then hopefully be signed by the President. Then it is about implementation. We have to get into the programmatic audits and make sure they are back up and running as quickly as possible. We have to finalise the patient-requested reviews, including all the details discussed this evening. We need that in place. We need to continue and accelerate the work.

I accept the reasonable challenge from colleagues on the complaints processes and procedures. We need to put that in place. We have a review around medical negligence claims. First and foremost, it is about identifying the cause of the medical negligence and doing the root-cause analysis to make sure everything is done to stop it happening in the first place. Some 70% of allocated awards are around obstetrics and childbirth. There is a big focus there but there needs to be a focus on other places as well.

It is critical to find better way for patients to be compensated in the event there is an issue. I think we all agree the current process does not work for patients. The remit under which the State Claims Agency is obliged to work under statute is not working for patients and has not worked for patients.

See this speech in context