THE McCole hepatitis C case had highlighted the need to reform the adversarial approach to dealing with medical negligence claims in this State, said Dr Mary Henry (Ind).
She was speaking in the debate on the Bill to establish the Hepatitis C Compensation Tribunal on a statutory basis.
The Bill passed all stages.
Dr Henry said she had the greatest sympathy with the McCole family, who felt their mother had been pursued by the State on her deathbed.
Urging the Minister to address the problem of the adversarial system, she said it was very hard on plaintiffs, who were generally patients.
Dr Henry said she failed to understand why we could not make the kind of changes that had been brought about in other countries. For example, there was a no fault compensation fund in New Zealand, where claimants did not have to establish negligence. But here in Ireland, the plaintiff had to show there was a lack of duty of care by a doctor. That could sometimes be extraordinarily time consuming and difficult.
At present, we did not even have an exchange of witness statements or of expert witness reports, as happened early in cases in most other countries.
Defending the handling by the Minister for Health, Mr Noonan, of the hepatitis C "tragedy", the House leader, Mr Maurice Manning said the events surrounding it had been without precedent. Mistakes had been made, but, as The Irish Times had pointed out yesterday in a fair and judicious editorial, the same mistakes would probably be made again by public servants faced with the same problems.