David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

That is Mr. O'Brien's interpretation but people might put a different interpretation on what the auditors meant. Mr. O'Brien is putting a more positive slant on what they meant by national implications. As I stated, with all seriousness, when one considers the gravity of the report, one must accept that this is highly unusual in its findings, in terms of every single finding being ranked as high, and the extraordinary failures. That does not come across in respect of Mr. O'Brien's report.

I will get to a number of other issues, if I can. I will start with the sequence of events because it seems that the clock starts in 2013 in respect of Mr. O'Brien's view as to what the trigger was for the internal audit, and maybe even 2014 because Mr. O'Brien talks about the concerns the National Office for Suicide Prevention had in relation to the helpline funding and that led to the internal audit report. However, in terms of the clock starting, one must go back further than that because concerns were raised, as was said earlier, in 2006. There was an exchange between Mr. O'Brien and the previous speaker on that, and we have heard what Mr. O'Brien had to say. We also had an RTE report, which states that in 2009, an official in the National Office for Suicide Prevention wrote a memo highlighting deficiencies in Console's governance and accounting saying that the 2004 expenditure did not add up, the 2006 accounts had wrong membership of the Console board, the 2007 were not signed-off on by the chairperson and questions needed to be asked of the €145,000 spent on professional fees charged over years. In 2011, further concerns were raised with the then Department of Health and Children. We also know that concerns were raised by a former parliamentary assistant to the former Minister, Senator James Reilly, and subsequently, to an official in the HSE or the Department as well. The clock, with respect, goes back much further than the 2013 start which Mr. O'Brien would have us believe is when concerns were first brought to the HSE's attention in respect of this. The reality is that there were many flags raised and the flags were missed, and there was nine-year gap between when the flags were first raised and when the internal audit report commenced. Would it be fair to say that?