Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

At the outset, I will call out and condemn what happened to the Deputy’s constituency office. I am thinking of her and her staff and would encourage anyone with information to come forward to the Garda in Offaly. It was an utterly despicable act that should be called out and condemned by all.

I thank the Deputy for raising this important issue. She has made a number of constructive suggestions and interventions on it. The first action we need to take is to make our health service as safe as it can be. That requires additional capacity, as reducing overcrowding in EDs plays a part in helping us have a safe environment. It also requires putting structures in place so that, when something goes wrong, all of the facts are shared with patients in an up-front and frank manner and a safe environment for the sharing of that information can be provided. A great deal of work has been ongoing in health in recent years in terms of the establishment of the National Patient Safety Office and the passing by the Oireachtas of the landmark patient safety Act and the relevant provisions around open disclosure. From meeting many patients in my time as Minister for Health, I know that the failure to disclose often caused significant pain and people to feel like they had been forced into the legal system when all they wanted was answers and for someone to be up front and talk to them. Equally, or perhaps not equally, the clinicians said that they did not know how to interact in that regard and there needed to be clear policies and laws.

The patient safety Act was an important step, but the Deputy is right about there being actions that need to be taken to reduce the costs arising from medical negligence. Of course, we need to reduce medical negligence as well, and to address Professor Colleran’s points, steps are being taken. Speaking from memory, the Government appointed in January of last year Dr. Rhona Mahony, an eminent individual, the former master of one of our maternity hospitals and a leading clinician, to chair a group to do exactly as the Deputy suggested, that being, to consider how to reduce the cost of health-related legal cases, with a particular focus on some of the higher cost cases as examples. My understanding is that that work is nearing conclusion. When it is concluded, its report will be considered by the Minister for Health and relevant Government colleagues, published and, I expect, brought to the Cabinet. We need a roadmap. It is important that we consider how to reduce the patient safety incidents in our health service that the Deputy referenced. It is also important that, when things go wrong, we have a system in place that is not an outlier in terms of legal costs and timelines compared with neighbouring jurisdictions.

See this speech in context