Lynn Ruane (Independent) | Oireachtas source

In teasing out the affidavit piece, later on we will get to how long it takes for the system to respond to applications so we add in another layer. No real timeframe went into the legislation in terms of when people can expect to hear back. Then we add in another step that requires an affidavit. Someone applies, they say that they are registered with maternity services and not with the county home because their journey began with the maternity services so the records are saying that they received maternity services. Where then does the burden of proof lie? For example, a person swears in the affidavit that they were in the maternity services but they were refused some services or their child was taken away from them. They received all the same conditions as if they had been in the county home, right next door in the same facility. Is the affidavit enough to prove that a person received maternity services but in the scheme of the hospital and what was going on in that relationship, the person actually received the same treatment that they would have whether they laid their head on the pillow in the county home in the same facility? Is an affidavit alone enough or are people going to have to prove this? How will that work? I understand that for other places the records alone are enough but I think there is potential for the records to be quite skewed in some places. Were they offering two different administrative spaces? Was it one administration? If a person arrived at one were they registered as arriving in maternity care and was that registration swapped over that a person was shifted somewhere else? We risk unintentionally making it really difficult for some people in those co-located sites unless we fully understand how they operated.