Mr. Tony O'Brien:

When I was before the committee in February 2016, I made a very clear and unambiguous statement in relation to this whole issue, not just the Grace case but the other cases which were the subject of the Resilience Ireland reports, that where it is clear that persons had been harmed, had suffered a loss or a negative consequence as a result of failures of the then South Eastern Health Board or the HSE, we would not be taking an adversarial, contested approach to dealing with those issues. That was what was followed in this case. I was absolutely clear at the end of January and in early February of 2016. The Deputy will recall that there was an issue about apologies and so on. I intervened and made a full apology, personally, to everyone involved and I made it clear that this was not to be dealt with in an adversarial manner.