Results 981-1,000 of 3,336 for speaker:Kate O'Connell

Written Answers — Department of Health: Medicinal Products Reimbursement (25 Sep 2018)

Kate O'Connell: 275. To ask the Minister for Health the length of time persons are waiting on average for drugs to be approved for public funding (details supplied); and the processes and procedures being undertaken to expedite access for persons with MS to new and effective treatments in a timely fashion. [38381/18]

Public Accounts Committee: 2016 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 1 - President's Establishment (25 Sep 2018)

Kate O'Connell: I do not think we have seen any evidence yet today that there is anything untoward about that €317,000. The previous speaker's reference to a "slush fund" is regrettable and, perhaps, slightly inflammatory.

Public Accounts Committee: 2016 Annual Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and Appropriation Accounts
Vote 1 - President's Establishment (25 Sep 2018)

Kate O'Connell: The use of that language in the same sentence is deliberately inflammatory. That cannot be denied. It was deliberate.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: Business of Joint Committee
General Scheme of the Patient Safety Bill 2018: Department of Health (26 Sep 2018)

Kate O'Connell: The important thing is that the Bill should be fit for purpose. I am concerned about the emergence of a two-tier reporting system. I refer to page 8. I do not understand why there is not one system of logging errors. Going back to the Scally report, it reminds me of where there was a cancer registry and the CervicalCheck list. I wonder why we would have more than one list for logging...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: Business of Joint Committee
General Scheme of the Patient Safety Bill 2018: Department of Health (26 Sep 2018)

Kate O'Connell: I am concerned that the audit data will not be subject to freedom of information requests or that it would be usable in court. I understand entirely where we are coming from but I am concerned that the focus is on the professional not on the patient. If everything is all open and accountable why would the information not be admissible in court? It is holding onto the past rather than...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: Business of Joint Committee
General Scheme of the Patient Safety Bill 2018: Department of Health (26 Sep 2018)

Kate O'Connell: I cannot understand the period of seven days. In the practical sense, I have this vision of a hospital situation where nobody dies but errors are made over a day, and then it is day six, and that one had better sit down at one's desk and fill in all one's errors. Then, a bundle of error pages gets handed to the next person, who puts them into the computer. I see that as a list that is not...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: Business of Joint Committee
General Scheme of the Patient Safety Bill 2018: Department of Health (26 Sep 2018)

Kate O'Connell: In the hospital setting currently, must a consultant who is employed by a hospital group sign up to the terms and conditions of that hospital group? Is there not scope on an individual basis, when it comes to a hospital group or a trust, that the doctor would be told that if they were coming to work there, part of the contract is that they must sign up to the internal auditing process? Is...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: Business of Joint Committee
General Scheme of the Patient Safety Bill 2018: Department of Health (26 Sep 2018)

Kate O'Connell: On the one list, why are there multiple lists? An explanatory note in the general scheme of Patient Safety Bill 2018, states, "Through Ministerial regulations, those "reportable incidents" which must be reported to the relevant reporting authority [...]" and it refers to a "detailed listing". I am uncomfortable with two lists. Who is the person who decides what is reportable and what is...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: Business of Joint Committee
General Scheme of the Patient Safety Bill 2018: Department of Health (26 Sep 2018)

Kate O'Connell: One database?

Health (Regulation of Termination of Pregnancy) Bill 2018: Second Stage (4 Oct 2018)

Kate O'Connell: Do I have until the end of debate, until 5 p.m.?

Health (Regulation of Termination of Pregnancy) Bill 2018: Second Stage (4 Oct 2018)

Kate O'Connell: Every time a speaker has contributed here today he or she has said, as has been said many times, that this is an historic day. I could not help but grin every time because it meant so much each time it was said. It is a long road that has no turning. There are many people in here who never thought we would get here. We are on the cusp of legislating for free, safe and legal bodily...

Public Accounts Committee: Teagasc Financial Statements 2017 (4 Oct 2018)

Kate O'Connell: Professor Boyle was asked a question earlier about building up capital reserves and Teagasc sold assets in 2016. Going forward, how sustainable is it to sell assets to fund daily operations? He said that "this fund will be ring-fenced and only used as we need it". That seems to me to be contradictory so perhaps Professor Boyle might clarify what he meant by that. On the wage bill where...

Public Accounts Committee: Teagasc Financial Statements 2017 (4 Oct 2018)

Kate O'Connell: It is like a bridging loan.

Public Accounts Committee: Teagasc Financial Statements 2017 (4 Oct 2018)

Kate O'Connell: I thank Professor Boyle.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: Scoping Inquiry into the CervicalCheck Screening Programme: Discussion (10 Oct 2018)

Kate O'Connell: I thank the witnesses for attending the committee and for the work they did on this report. Over the summer I was conscious that people were saying it was a very good report. It is a very well-written report. Any of us who were involved in the discussions at the Committee on Health and the Committee of Public Accounts wonder how the witnesses got so much information out of them when we...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: Scoping Inquiry into the CervicalCheck Screening Programme: Discussion (10 Oct 2018)

Kate O'Connell: Am I right in saying that the people who were the actual QA team were not the people who went over?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: Scoping Inquiry into the CervicalCheck Screening Programme: Discussion (10 Oct 2018)

Kate O'Connell: It was a team within.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: Scoping Inquiry into the CervicalCheck Screening Programme: Discussion (10 Oct 2018)

Kate O'Connell: The quality assurance committee went to the laboratories in the States. When it came home, was it blissfully unaware that the laboratories it had just audited were sending slides to other laboratories?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: Scoping Inquiry into the CervicalCheck Screening Programme: Discussion (10 Oct 2018)

Kate O'Connell: It was stated in the contracts that the laboratories had to be International Organisation for Standardisation, ISO, accredited. There is a table on page 60 of the report which shows the difference in ISO and College of American Pathologists, CAP, accreditation standards. To me, there is a distinct difference between the two. Our contract asked for ISO accredited laboratories, but what we...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: Scoping Inquiry into the CervicalCheck Screening Programme: Discussion (10 Oct 2018)

Kate O'Connell: The simple fact of the matter is that what was sought in the contract was not the standard on the other side.