Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I know the Senator is not pressing the amendment, but on the point on the vaccine trials, we must recall that on the substantive provisions to do with the release of information, it is about the release of information and a copy of the records on all the different headings. For example, section 15 refers to "Relevant body or Authority to provide medical information". I know it is not care information, but they are mirrored. Section 15(2)(a) states: "shall, to the extent that it is practicable to do so, provide the relevant person with a copy of the records specified". That is repeated for the other provisions as well. It is not the bare information that a person was subjected to a vaccine trial, full stop. It is copies of records as well. I hope that offers some reassurance on that first point.

In terms of the definition of "care arrangement", we refined this as we went along and we feel that it now captures both the various formal nursed out or boarded out arrangements, fostering under the Child Care Act, and arrangements where someone was placed with an adoptive parent but an adoption did not materialise in the end.

Our approach to the catch-all is in paragraph (e), "an arrangement under which a child was cared for as a resident of an institution specified in the Schedule". We believe that is the most effective way. What Senator Higgins is putting forward is incredibly broad and it is hard to understand the remit of that. We have provided a remit. We have provided a Schedule and the Schedule can be amended to include additional institutions, as necessary. When concerns were raised about the Schedule or who falls within or falls without, I did ask for examples, as we added that because someone had given us an example of a person who was in an institution for a number of years and who eventually left and returned to their mother. They are not adopted, fostered or boarded out and they could not have used the provisions, so we did make a change to reflect the unique situation, but we believe we have captured those situations now and the matter is addressed under the current definition of "care information".