There is a life-and-death catastrophe unfolding in the hospitals, especially in my own region at the moment. Eleven ambulances were stuck outside of Drogheda hospital last Saturday because there was not a bed, a chair or a trolley available for them. Seventeen consultants in Drogheda hospital wrote a letter to the Minister stating that it is a threat to the life and health of patients in the region if the Government proceeds with the closure of the accident and emergency unit in Navan. It is an incredible situation that we have an accident and emergency unit about to be closed in part from this Monday and, at the same time, we cannot get access to the other accident and emergency units in the region. There was no availability of ambulances in Cavan and Monaghan last Saturday night because those ambulances were tied up. We need a proper debate about the crisis in accident and emergency units across the State before these decisions are made.

I too want to raise the patient safety Bill. We have waited over six months for Government amendments. 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.

That is an entirely unreasonable way of dealing with very important business. The Minister and the Government need to rethink this. It is not possible to deal with that level of serious amendments without any kind of briefing from the Minister or his Department.

It is important to clarify the position with regard to the Patient Safety (Notifiable Patient Safety Incidents) Bill 2019 and the key issue of open disclosure, which has been raised here. We should not confuse clinical audits with patient-requested reviews. They are different. They are explained clearly in the report that was published by the expert review group. 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. I wish to put on record that it will be mandatory to disclose the results of these reviews to women.