Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I fully accept and appreciate the Deputy’s frustration. As he noted, he has been talking about this for more than 20 years. I fully accept that. He will be aware that in mid-June 2018, the Government received a comprehensive report from Mr. Justice Charles Meenan on clinical negligence. My understanding is that it was intended in early 2020 to do exactly what the Deputy is calling for - to pull this group together, examine the international evidence and introduce something here for exactly the reasons outlined by him. Then Covid happened and the public health experts and doctors, the Chief Medical Officer, the deputy Chief Medical Officer, the bioethicists and all the people we would normally have involved in this were for obvious reasons pulled almost exclusively into the Covid response. Let us all hope that Covid is in the rear view mirror and now is the time we can pull this group together.

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