Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for coming in to the House and for the clarity, sincerity and consistency of her remarks. I also thank her for her willingness to take the McCabe family seriously and to engage appropriately with them at a very early point, which is commendable. I will not, in the limited time available, dwell on the indefensible and appalling treatment of the McCabe family but I welcome the fact that the Minister has recognised that an apology - wrongly delivered or otherwise - is not enough. This is not simply about a failure of the State. We are talking here about actions of the State, which is the real concern. It is a step beyond concerns around a failure of the State; we are talking about the dangers of proactive actions of the State that do such a disservice to our citizens.

On the forthcoming tribunal of inquiry, I welcome the fact that it will be held in public, which is obviously necessary. Independent persons should be involved in that process and we must ensure that the McCabes are happy with the terms of reference of that inquiry. I welcome the Minister's announcement of a statutory investigation by the Health Information and Quality Authority, HIQA, but would like to hear a little more about it. The Minister spoke about practices and procedures. I am hoping that the investigation will be deeper and will not just look at formal practices and procedures in terms of errors but also in terms of malpractice. We need to look to where malpractice may be occurring as well as errors. As with others in this House, I find the cut and paste argument very unconvincing. We need to look to areas not only where errors may have occurred but also where malpractice may be occurring within the system.

I welcome the extension to involve other whistleblowers. This investigation must be short and sharp but we will need a deeper examination of Tusla into the future and I hope the Minister will lead that. Finally, there has been much focus on the timelines of last week in terms of who said what on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and so forth but the timelines that we must now focus on are in April and May 2014. We must focus on whether there were attempts to introduce the Tusla forms to the O'Higgins inquiry, for example. Is that something that occurred? The full tracking of timelines is vital. On that point, I wish to add to what Senator Boyhan said earlier-----