Minister for Health Leo Varadkar has marked the 30th anniversary of the first heart transplant in Ireland by calling for a major "cultural shift" towards organ donation. Mr Varadkar set a target of 300 transplants to be carried out this year, compared to 251 last year, and said he wants Ireland to be in the top tier internationally for all types of transplants.
Legislation requiring people to opt out of organ donation, as opposed to the current system where people have to opt in, would be published later this year.
Asked whether it had any prospect of becoming law during the lifetime of the present Government, he replied there was a “good chance” of this – if the current Dáil runs its full term to April 2016.
Under the legislation, a register of people specifically wishing to opt out of donating their organs will be created and the status of everyone else will be one of presumed consent. Mr Varadkar stressed the wishes of families would remain paramount. “I hope it starts a debate among families. The most important thing is that people have that difficult conversation about what they would like to happen if they were to die tragically.”
The Minister was speaking at a reception in the Mater Misericordiae University Hospital in Dublin to mark the 30th anniversary of its heart transplant programme and the 10th anniversary of the lung transplant programme. Ireland has the third highest rate of lung transplants in Europe but is only mid-ranking for most other types of transplant.
Prof Jim Egan, chairman of the national lung and heart transplant programme, said the aim now was to model services on the approach taken in Spain, where the deployment of co-ordinators liaising with donors' families has greatly improved the supply of organs.
Among the attendance yesterday was Patrick Barry (33), from Tallaght. In 1993, aged 11, he became the youngest Irish person to receive a heart transplant after being struck down by a life-threatening viral infection. He is now the father of two young girls and regularly plays sport.
Mr Barry stressed the donation of organs involved much more than saving just one life. “I was given that organ when I was 11 and if I hadn’t been given that heart, my daughters would never have been born. So you’re not only saving one life – you’re creating new ones.”
