Clare Daly (Dublin Fingal, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Right, okay. I want to bring the Ombudsman back in on some issues. I knew there was something else I wanted to return to before Mr. Martin responded.

In terms of the decision to interpret the words "admitted to" and "worked in" in the manner in which the Department did to the exclusion of people who presented themselves to the scheme and given that the Department had an interaction with the Ombudsman's office for almost a year prior to the report and presumably in the course of the year of the report, was there ever any engagement with the Minister or anyone else to point out that they had given the Department a scheme that was way too restrictive, that they were supposed to be compensating these women, yet many of them were now excluded because they inserted the words "admitted to" and "worked in" and that they needed to change that? Was that ever flagged by anybody anywhere?