Mary Henry (Independent)

I also welcome the report. Of course I had to look at it from the point of view of medical negligence claims and so forth. Some really spurious arguments have been brought forward regarding the effectiveness of litigation in reducing medical errors, for example, and there is absolutely no evidence of this. On a recent edition of "Prime Time" the director general of the Law Society stated that some 2,000 people die from preventable medical errors in Irish hospitals every year and it is likely that 14,000 people are injured or killed in Irish hospitals every year. This is really just information which has been taken crudely from the estimated extent of hospital errors in American hospitals and transposed into an Irish setting without anyone producing evidence that this is the case.

What has been particularly resented was the claim made on that television programme that the courts have contributed hugely to the safety of our hospitals. There is absolutely no evidence to show that at all. Medical errors in general are due to people being over-tired or undertaking work in which they do not have adequate experience in many cases. I strongly support the Government's efforts to bring in a consultant-provided service. To date, we have had a consultant-led service and this certainly has been a problem with people having to undertake duties for which they were not perhaps qualified.

Sometimes the legal profession compliments itself on things it is not doing. There has been a much better system in areas where we have had more open reporting of faults rather than in areas where people have been running to litigation immediately. Any way in which we can remove litigation from the centre of court processes and claims can only be to the advantage of everyone within our society.