Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú) | Oireachtas source

There are major problems in the health service that the Government can act on now that have led, in part, to the difficulties we are suffering. There is not proper data collection in our health service at the moment. There is not a proper digital patient number in the health service. We do not have a good register of information in the health service. The capture of outcomes is not valued in the health service. We do not track patients in a similar fashion to other jurisdictions to enable us to be able to flag these situations, if they should arise at all. Fixing those particular issues would be of extreme benefit to patients in the system and ensure these issues do not happen in the future. The idea that we would start to track and perhaps even pay hospitals for their activities and outcomes, instead of the manner in which hospitals are paid now, would be beneficial in ensuring that money does not get lost on the front line and get caught up in layers of administration.

My worry now is whether all the parents who could potentially be caught up in this scandal over the last 15 years have been contacted. What is the depth of information they have received? Is it a generic letter or have they been given information specific to their own cases?

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