Lucinda Creighton (Dublin South East, Independent)
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101. To ask the Minister for Health the steps that have been taken to address the issues raised by the chief medical officer in his report into the Portlaoise hospital babies scandal; if he will confirm that his position is consistent with his predecessor in his unambiguous commitment to the introduction of legislation to enforce mandatory reporting in such instances; when this legislation will be published; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [42785/14]

Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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I believe that it is vitally important that we restore public confidence in the quality of maternity services at Portlaoise and steps have already been taken to do so. Following the publication of the Chief Medical Officer's Report into perinatal deaths in Portlaoise the Health Service Executive established an Implementation Group to oversee and ensure the recommendations of the Report are progressed in a timely and effective manner. The HSE submits regular progress reports on the implementation process to my Department.

One of the recommendations of the Portlaoise Report was that the HSE's National Open Disclosure Policy which was developed jointly by the HSE and the State Claims Agency and launched in November 2013, should be implemented in full. The Policy is designed to ensure an open, consistent approach to communicating with patients and their families when things go wrong in healthcare. This includes expressing regret for what has happened, keeping the patient informed, providing feedback on investigations and the steps taken to prevent a recurrence of the adverse event. Implementation of the policy across all health and social services has now commenced by the HSE. At the recent Patient Safety First Conference last Friday, 7th November, the National Lead for Open Disclosure in the HSE advised that over 250 staff briefing sessions and 95 workshops have taken place to date. An evaluation of the Pilot sites indicates that there has been positive feedback from the process with staff having gained confidence to engage in open disclosure.

Ireland currently has no express legislation to assist the open disclosure process. However, it is intended that this situation will change with the Health Information Bill which is expected to be ready for publication in 2015. That Bill will contain a number of measures to better promote patient safety including a provision to encourage open disclosure by affording a degree of protection for healthcare personnel. This is consistent with the Report of the Commission on Patient Safety and Quality Assurance. It is also in line with a recommendation in a consultation paper published by the Law Reform Commission in 2008 that "a statutory provision be considered which would allow medical practitioners to make an apology and explanation without these being construed as an admission of liability in a medical negligence claim".