Results 801-820 of 1,253 for speaker:John Crown

Seanad: Diesel Laundering: Statements (23 May 2013)

John Crown: The Minister of State should see the frenzy when it happens.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health and Children: Update on Health Affairs: Discussion with Minister for Health and HSE (23 May 2013)

John Crown: I do not think was HIQA.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health and Children: Update on Health Affairs: Discussion with Minister for Health and HSE (23 May 2013)

John Crown: I am going to depart from my prepared questions in order to ask the Minister to clarify something. Thankfully, I have had an hour and a half to calm down about this matter. It is reported in today's edition of The Irish Times that on 7 May the Taoiseach, together with the Ministers for Finance and Justice and Equality, Deputies Michael Noonan and Alan Shatter, held a meeting with...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health and Children: Update on Health Affairs: Discussion with Minister for Health and HSE (23 May 2013)

John Crown: I understand the Minister may not have been briefed on this breaking development. However, he will be in a position to indicate whether he is aware that the meeting in question took place and whether he advised his political colleagues not to proceed with it. The meeting in question may be in breach of the 2004 directive regarding transparency in lobbying by the tobacco industry....

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health and Children: Update on Health Affairs: Discussion with Minister for Health and HSE (23 May 2013)

John Crown: We did not discuss what took place at the meeting held on 7 May.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health and Children: Update on Health Affairs: Discussion with Minister for Health and HSE (23 May 2013)

John Crown: That is fair enough. I will return to my prepared questions. I am tremendously concerned about developments in the matter of oversight of ethical committees. For reasons I do not have time to discuss today, I have had a long involvement in this area and encountered the extraordinary dysfunction and pathology of the way these committees worked in the past. In some cases they were under...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health and Children: Heads of Protection of Life during Pregnancy Bill 2013: Public Hearings (Resumed) (21 May 2013)

John Crown: I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Alex White. I also pay tribute to your job, Chairman. There is a phrase in academic medicine that sometimes trying to chair meetings of academic doctors is like herding cats. The hearings were a bit like trying to herd cats when they had been taking crystal meth and possibly had rabies.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health and Children: Heads of Protection of Life during Pregnancy Bill 2013: Public Hearings (Resumed) (21 May 2013)

John Crown: I am very sorry. I regret any offence to the cat community for the latter remark of drawing an analogy between cats and Irish parliamentarians. There can truly be few situations where the will of the people and the voice of the Constitution have spoken as clearly as they have on the narrowly defined necessity for abortion in very narrow circumstances, ones which entirely relate to the life...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health and Children: Heads of Protection of Life during Pregnancy Bill 2013: Public Hearings (Resumed) (21 May 2013)

John Crown: I am very sorry. I will finish on this point. It is regrettable that the Minister, the CEO and the chief medical officer have not been able to be present for the three days of hearings. They were present for the first session. The Minister left and we were under the impression that the CEO and the CMO of the Department of Health would be present, but they were not. I cancelled an...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health and Children: Heads of Protection of Life during Pregnancy Bill 2013: Public Hearings (Resumed) (21 May 2013)

John Crown: I beg your pardon, a Chathaoirligh, I have some ocular infirmity.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health and Children: Heads of Protection of Life during Pregnancy Bill 2013: Public Hearings (Resumed) (21 May 2013)

John Crown: I will be as brief as I can, so I will have to speak quickly. Article 34.4.6o of the Constitution states that: "The decision of the Supreme Court shall in all cases be final and conclusive." Our gardaí, soldiers, judges and our Uachtarán all swear oaths to uphold that Constitution. Many of our gardaí have died defending it against people who did not recognise the...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health and Children: Heads of Protection of Life during Pregnancy Bill 2013: Public Hearings (Resumed) (21 May 2013)

John Crown: I am sorry but this terminology is a fact.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health and Children: Heads of Protection of Life during Pregnancy Bill 2013: Public Hearings (Resumed) (21 May 2013)

John Crown: If Dr. Cahill has qualifications to speak about psychiatry, I will be delighted to be corrected.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health and Children: Heads of Protection of Life during Pregnancy Bill 2013: Public Hearings (Resumed) (21 May 2013)

John Crown: I do understand that but her-----

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health and Children: Heads of Protection of Life during Pregnancy Bill 2013: Public Hearings (Resumed) (21 May 2013)

John Crown: It is singularly disingenuous to state that there has been a considered, unanimous body of opinion on the basis of evidence-based medicine, which tells us that suicidality will never be an issue which could be addressed by termination of a pregnancy. There has been a spectrum of opinions. I live by consensus medical opinions and the development of evidence-based medical guidelines, and we...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health and Children: Heads of Protection of Life during Pregnancy Bill 2013: Public Hearings (Resumed) (20 May 2013)

John Crown: I welcome my colleagues and thank them for their particularly learned, focused and well-informed presentations. My first question is for Dr. Kevin Walsh. One of the issues which has exercised the committee in recent days relates to the quantification of risk, namely, the percentage chance an individual has of dying. It is clear that this becomes very nebulous and contentious in the area...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health and Children: Heads of Protection of Life during Pregnancy Bill 2013: Public Hearings (Resumed) (20 May 2013)

John Crown: I apologise for leaving the meeting for a while; I had to attend at the hospital. With great respect to my professional colleagues, I also live and work daily in the world of evidence-based medicine.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health and Children: Heads of Protection of Life during Pregnancy Bill 2013: Public Hearings (Resumed) (20 May 2013)

John Crown: If I have a patient in front of me - there are sometimes two patients in front of me in one person - I will never make a decision that it is not the right decision for the patient. No one is ever going to ask physicians to do that. However, we are constitutionally bound as a result of Professor Binchy's interventions 30 years. The ambiguous constitutional position in which we have found...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health and Children: Heads of Protection of Life during Pregnancy Bill 2013: Public Hearings (Resumed) (20 May 2013)

John Crown: On a point of information, the evidence base in medicine is available for all doctors who can all see the same evidence. There is not different evidence for different doctors.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health and Children: Heads of Protection of Life during Pregnancy Bill 2013: Public Hearings (Resumed) (20 May 2013)

John Crown: In formulating the decision as to whether suicidality will be in the Bill, the five witnesses have the same rights as any five citizens of our country in a popular referendum. The decision has been made by the Supreme Court, which according to Article 34.4.6° of the Constitution states that the decision of the Supreme Court shall in all cases be final and definitive. That can be...