David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I could do it now. I will make one contribution only and I will be supporting all of the amendments. I, too, welcome all of those to the Public Gallery. They all are very welcome. This Bill has been a long time coming. Many of the substantial issues in relation to children's coronary services, but also issues in relation to how organs were disposed of in the past in certain parts of the country, are obviously emotive issues that needed to be dealt with and are being dealt with.

I, too, know many people who have had organ transplants. It is a huge undertaking but it is also, as we know, life-saving and life-changing. What we are doing in this Bill is obviously really important and I commend the Minister on bringing it forward.

I will make a number of quick points in the sole contribution that I will make. First of all, I thank the Minister for all of the work that has been done and, indeed, all of his officials. I also thank the Irish Kidney Association and many others who have strongly advocated for change in this area.

We had some very lengthy discussions on Second and Committee Stages on some of the concerns that some organisations had and the Minister has been generous in working with those in opposition and, indeed, the health committee, and we were able to reach an accommodation on many of the issues which is good for everybody.

As I said, the Bill is an important piece of legislation that will, among other things, provide for an organ donation opt-out register on a deemed-consent basis and provides for the regulation of the possession, retention or disposal of organs and human issues. There was a number of difficult and emotive "Prime Time" programmes that the Minister and I would have seen where we had some tragic circumstances of organs that were disposed of absolutely incorrectly. Body parts were sent to be incinerated outside of Ireland without the consent of parents of children, for example. That can never, ever happen again. As far as I am concerned, once this Bill is passed, I do not envisage that happening again. We are now putting in place a robust legal framework and that is a really important step. We all want to get this right, and needed to get this right which is why there had to be a lot of careful work done. There are lots of elements to this Bill but this is one of the parts I really feel is important that we need to welcome.

The Minister will recall that Britain introduced a human tissues Bill in 2004. Since then, as the Minister will be aware, we had the Madden report, the retained organs audit, the Carter report and, more recently, a series of scandals in hospitals across the State relating to the improper retention of organs, as I said.

The Bill is welcome in that it places previous guidelines on a firm statutory footing. That was something my party leader and I have been consistently calling for for a long number of years. I am really happy that this is now happening. I hope that we will see real accountability for any future breaches.

I believe there is an awful lot more to be done in relation to capacity in this area as well. There is a small number of paediatric pathologists, for example. It is a really specialised area. There is scope to work on an all-island basis, particularly with the Executive now up and running, to progress some of those matters.

Like all Bills, there are a lot of Bills that we have discussed in recent times in health where we are building in reviews. That is important because we want this to work. We want it to be as effective as possible. We had different opinions from different organisations and a debate on opt-in, opt-out and how all of that was going to work. In my view, we have now landed on a position where we need to give it time to work. Let us put it in place, let us pass this Bill and let us give it time to work and we will have a chance in the future to come back to evaluate the effectiveness of the Bill.

This is an important day for those advocate groups, the Irish Kidney Association and many others who have been campaigning for this.

I want to strongly commend the Minister on the work he has done. Maybe I do not get enough chances to do that but I will take the chance today to do that. This is a really important Bill. I was very privileged and happy to be part of the process and I look forward to its passage. I will not be making any further contribution. I will support all the amendments.

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