Déirdre de Búrca (Green Party)

I welcome the Minister to the House. I thank her for addressing the issue of patient safety. There is little disagreement in the House that patient safety must be the top priority for all our health care systems. The importance of the issue of patient safety was recognised in the current programme for Government in which the Government is committed to initiate a periodic review of legislation to improve patient safety, to continue to ensure all new health legislation makes provision for whistleblowers where applicable and to examine the implementation of an advisory charter of patients' rights similar to the European charter of patients' rights. The programme for Government also committed the Government to progressively introduce patient guarantees of what people could expect from their health service and to bring forward and implement the recommendations of the Commission on Patient Safety.

I did not fully understand Senator Twomey's remarks on the Health Information and Quality Authority because he seemed to criticise the circumstances in which it was created.

The Green Party welcomes the establishment of the HIQA——