Government accused of rushing through 'flawed' open disclosure legislation

Patient Safety Bill, which will require the mandatory open disclosure of serious patient safety incidents, has been allocated just two hours for debate to go through more than 50 amendments

Following Vicky Phelan's death, the Taoiseach had said the laws would be passed before the end of the year. Picture: Gareth Chaney/Collins

The Government has been accused of guillotining a Dáil debate to rush through "flawed" open disclosure legislation.

The Patient Safety Bill, which will require the mandatory open disclosure of serious patient safety incidents, has been allocated just two hours for debate on Wednesday to go through more than 50 Government amendments.

In the wake of Vicky Phelan's death, Taoiseach Michéal Martin told the Dáil that the laws would be passed before the end of the year. However, serious concerns had been raised about the restrictive nature of the legislation.

Ms Phelan had highlighted the urgent need for mandatory open disclosure in the healthcare system.

Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald strongly hit out at the Government for trying to rush through the bill.

"The legislation is to come before the House and the debate is to be guillotined," she said.

"The minister for health has tabled 50 separate amendments but the one amendment we need to see to prescribe in law the absolute obligation for full open disclosure is not there.

'Guillotined' debate

"The legislation means that a discordant, erroneous or incorrect cancer screening will become a notifiable incident, but the duty of candour is not there.

"The fact the Government would seek to move flawed legislation in this way and, furthermore, to guillotine the debate is all the more insulting to the women who have suffered as a result of the CervicalCheck scandal," she told the Dáil.

This was echoed by Social Democrats co-leader Róisín Shortall who called on Health Minister Stephen Donnelly to "rethink" the "unreasonable" way in which the bill is being handled as she said it is not possible to deal with the "level of serious amendments" being tabled without a full briefing.

We waited over six months for Government amendments, and they were circulated and we received them on Friday morning.

"There are 42 pages of amendments from the minister. There has been no briefing and no pre-legislative scrutiny, and the deadline was on Monday morning for amendments to those amendments," she said.

Responding, Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform
Michael McGrath said a new patient-requested review process has been developed for screening, following the guidelines from the expert group and designed in conjunction with patients, including the 221+ group.

"It will be mandatory to disclose the results of these reviews to women."

He added that "the Oireachtas will perform its function in respect of the legislative process and that will take place".