The Minister almost managed it but not quite in terms of hit-and-run accidents before lunch. The Minister must do everything possible to prevent people feigning injury or illness and being brought to hospital following an accident thus avoiding detection for driving over the drink limit. This has been a major loophole to date. There is no doubt that the faking of injury has allowed people to avoid the full rigours of the law following accidents involving drink driving.
Apparently, however, there is concern among the Irish Hospital Consultants Association in relation to this matter and the Minister needs to put his views on the record to allay any fears they have. I am referring to a press report over the weekend by a health correspondent, Eilish O'Regan, which requires a response from the Minister. If there is genuine fear among hospital doctors that the Minister's proposals in section 15 are inoperable, or will in some way undermine the doctor/patient relationship or current practices, particularly in casualty departments of hospitals, the Minister should look again at this section without losing his intention of getting at the person who is faking following an accident.
The Minister should respond to the hospital consultants' concerns, because the doctors believe that to demand samples could place them in a serious ethical and legal dilemma and they have made that point clearly. What will happen if a consultant turns down a request from a garda to take a sample? Will the consultant have to reply in writing setting out the reasons for his or her refusal, or can he or she say no on the spur of the moment behind the curtain in the casualty ward? To what extent are the consultants protected if they refuse to allow gardaí, with the designated doctor, to take a sample from a patient who may or may not be injured, the extent of whose injuries have not been ascertained within the three hour rule?
The Minister has been asked to clarify the medical and legal responsibility for the patient, and whether that responsibility will be transferred from the consultant who admits the patient to the medical practitioner who comes to take the sample at the behest of the local gardaí investigating the accident. Will there be a transfer of medical and legal responsibility or will the consultant have to refuse or grant permission for a urine or, more likely, a blood sample to be taken in these cases? We need clarification on this. My amendment does not pretend to be too scientific, but it begs for clarification in straightforward English of section 15 (1) — a formula which appears under one guise or another several times in the Bill — which states:
Where, in a public place, an event occurs in relation to a mechanically propelled vehicle in consequence of which a person is injured, or claims or appears to have been injured, and is admitted to hospital and a member of the Garda Síochána is of the opinion that, at the time of the event,—
(a) the person was driving or attempting to drive, or in charge of with intent to drive or attempt to drive (but not driving or attempting to drive), the mechanically propelled vehicle,
We know the Minister is trying to say that attempting to, or having intent to, is as big a crime as actually driving. Is the Minister satisfied that the phraseology, or parliamentary legal speak, in the section is clear?