Results 9,001-9,020 of 14,127 for speaker:David Stanton

Select Committee on Justice and Equality: Civil Liability (Amendment) Bill 2017: Committee Stage (29 Jun 2017)

David Stanton: A lot of work has gone into this and it has been taken very seriously. I recognise that the amendments proposed by Deputies Daly and Wallace are intended to put in place a dedicated index for adjustment of periodic payments orders, as recommended by the High Court working group on medical negligence and periodic payments. The intention is to enable periodic payments to be index-linked to...

Select Committee on Justice and Equality: Civil Liability (Amendment) Bill 2017: Committee Stage (29 Jun 2017)

David Stanton: Yes. Under amendment No. 5, the "Minister shall, within 12 months of the enactment of this Part," create this index, start using it, make regulations and use it "along with" the other index. However, the amendment does not make it clear how this is to be done and which of the two indices is to be given the greater weighting, if any. When the UK did something similar, people ended up...

Select Committee on Justice and Equality: Civil Liability (Amendment) Bill 2017: Committee Stage (29 Jun 2017)

David Stanton: Five years.

Select Committee on Justice and Equality: Civil Liability (Amendment) Bill 2017: Committee Stage (29 Jun 2017)

David Stanton: According to the amendment, "within 12 months of the enactment of this Part," this index should be prepared and so forth. We are saying that the legislation will be reviewed comprehensively at the five-year mark. That gives us a reasonable amount of time to assess how it is working. Deputy O'Callaghan is right, in that this legislation is required as soon as possible. We need to get it...

Select Committee on Justice and Equality: Civil Liability (Amendment) Bill 2017: Committee Stage (29 Jun 2017)

David Stanton: I stand over what I have said already. I do not doubt at all the dedication of people who have thought about and put work into this. I welcome it. There are, I am told, approximately 30 relevant cases each year, which is a relatively small number. It would take five years to bed this in. The Bill states on page 11: "The Minister shall, not less than 5 years after the commencement of this...

Select Committee on Justice and Equality: Civil Liability (Amendment) Bill 2017: Committee Stage (29 Jun 2017)

David Stanton: I move amendment No. 2:In page 10, to delete lines 6 and 7 and substitute the following:“(b) whether the payments under the order are eligible for payment—(i) from the Insurance Compensation Fund, or (ii) by the Motor Insurers’ Bureau of Ireland;”. I have tabled this amendment following a request from the Motor Insurers' Bureau of Ireland, MIBI. The bureau...

Select Committee on Justice and Equality: Civil Liability (Amendment) Bill 2017: Committee Stage (29 Jun 2017)

David Stanton: The effect of the amendment would be to make it mandatory to carry out a subsequent review of the index applying to PPOs five years after the previous one. Taking on board what was discussed earlier and the idea that it is important for this to happen, I can see merit in the amendment. As a mandatory review provision would be beneficial, I will accept the amendment.

Select Committee on Justice and Equality: Civil Liability (Amendment) Bill 2017: Committee Stage (29 Jun 2017)

David Stanton: This is a very interesting discussion and I thank the Deputies for the amendments. The definition included in the legislation follows the accepted World Health Organization's international classification of patient safety. That definition takes into account actual adverse events where harm is caused to the patient. We all agree on that point. It also takes into account incidents in which...

Select Committee on Justice and Equality: Civil Liability (Amendment) Bill 2017: Committee Stage (29 Jun 2017)

David Stanton: As I said earlier, it is an interesting one. As Deputies O'Callaghan and Daly have said, there is a very small possibility that someone outside the health service provider, a nursing home doctor or whoever, not knowing about this, and if a family member were to bring it to his or her attention, obviously then he or she would have to make a call. We are talking about unintended and...

Select Committee on Justice and Equality: Civil Liability (Amendment) Bill 2017: Committee Stage (29 Jun 2017)

David Stanton: No. It is almost philosophical in a way, but one is trying to build up a culture of trust so that if something happens, the health service provider can go to the patient and say that something happened, or almost happened, knowing that such an admission and apology will not be liable to court action in itself. We want to encourage that culture to develop. There will be medical notes and...

Select Committee on Justice and Equality: Civil Liability (Amendment) Bill 2017: Committee Stage (29 Jun 2017)

David Stanton: I know where Deputies Daly and Wallace are coming from in this set of amendments, which provide for the provision of a mandatory apology. Our goal is to create a safe space where there can and should be full disclosure of the facts surrounding a patient safety incident and the implications, if any, for the patient's care and treatment. Let us put that out there, it is about a safe place....

Select Committee on Justice and Equality: Civil Liability (Amendment) Bill 2017: Committee Stage (29 Jun 2017)

David Stanton: On the question on what happens in the United Kingdom, there is a duty of candour for services there. In its consideration of voluntary open disclosure provision, the Joint Committee on Health recognised that the best chance of creating the conditions necessary for the success of open disclosure lies in taking a voluntary approach backed up by apology laws. In responding to the committee's...

Select Committee on Justice and Equality: Civil Liability (Amendment) Bill 2017: Committee Stage (29 Jun 2017)

David Stanton: Deputy Daly has made my case for me here because she has more or less indicated that a sincere, voluntary apology is much better than a forced one. We are trying to encourage sincere, voluntary apologies. In the example I gave of a child, I probably should have carried on to say that a parent would be better off to try to elicit a voluntary, sincere apology rather than forcing the child to...

Select Committee on Justice and Equality: Civil Liability (Amendment) Bill 2017: Committee Stage (29 Jun 2017)

David Stanton: It is not like that.

Select Committee on Justice and Equality: Civil Liability (Amendment) Bill 2017: Committee Stage (29 Jun 2017)

David Stanton: I am concerned that the Deputies do not understand the aim of the legislation and have missed the philosophical point, as Deputy Daly called it. I understand there was extensive pre-legislative scrutiny by the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Health, as mentioned by Deputy Daly. The matter has been examined. This set of amendments relate to the protections given for open disclosure in...

Select Committee on Justice and Equality: Civil Liability (Amendment) Bill 2017: Committee Stage (29 Jun 2017)

David Stanton: We want to encourage open disclosure and, where appropriate, a sincere apology. We want to change the culture in order that a patient can be told what happened and that those responsible are very sorry. All the records are available. If it were the case that the open disclosure, written or verbal, was admissible in court and a person could be sued for making it, he or she might in the...

Select Committee on Justice and Equality: Civil Liability (Amendment) Bill 2017: Committee Stage (29 Jun 2017)

David Stanton: On Deputy Jim O'Callaghan's points which were well made, the case notes or details of an incident will obviously be in the medical records. The fact that an open disclosure was made will also be noted. There is no need to ask, therefore, somebody whether he or she made an apology. It will be on the record Future care needs will also be on the record. We are on parallel tracks. On one...

Select Committee on Justice and Equality: Civil Liability (Amendment) Bill 2017: Committee Stage (29 Jun 2017)

David Stanton: No, it is not.

Select Committee on Justice and Equality: Civil Liability (Amendment) Bill 2017: Committee Stage (29 Jun 2017)

David Stanton: A number of amendments have been grouped and I will address these together. The Minister for Health fully appreciates the reasons some Deputies believe open disclosure should be mandatory. Deputy Daly indicated there was some contact earlier today on the issue. Considerable deliberation of the respective advantages of a mandatory and voluntary open disclosure framework took place before we...

Select Committee on Justice and Equality: Civil Liability (Amendment) Bill 2017: Committee Stage (29 Jun 2017)

David Stanton: We are back down to two sides. We all want to end up in the same place. There is no dispute or disagreement. The Minister is committed to evaluating the approach that is proposed. He suggests that we need to allow it to bed down and give it a chance to work. We all agree that voluntary open disclosure, if it works, will be the best outcome. We propose to start with the best outcome,...