John Deasy (Waterford, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I have asked Mr. O'Brien this before and he did not answer the question. How could he possibly know that the expertise did not exist if the HSE did not put it out to open tender? He would have absolutely no idea whether the expertise existed if it was not publicised. Notwithstanding the sensitivity he just mentioned, how would he know? The reason Mr. O'Brien and the organisation did not make an attempt to do this was because there was a comfort factor in finding individuals known by the senior officials in the HSE to deal with this. This stems back to 1992. It was 17 years previous to this commissioning of the report, in terms of Mr. Conal Devine, that these issues arose. Surely there was an urgency within the HSE to take it out of the HSE and deal with this independently. There was never an attempt to do that - it remained in the fold and the fold got stronger.