Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The open disclosure policy. I thank Mr. O'Brien. I would like to read out what the HSE defines as open disclosure, which is at the heart of all of this.

An open, consistent approach to communicating with service users when things go wrong in healthcare. This includes expressing regret for what has happened, keeping the service user informed, providing feedback on investigations and the steps taken to prevent a recurrence of the adverse event.

So, the question at hand is whether Vicky Phelan was afforded open disclosure, and whether many other women, and possibly men, within the national screening service have been afforded open disclosure, and indeed there is a wider question now across the HSE, due to this. From what I have seen in the past week, there is a conspiracy of silence within the healthcare system when it came to Vicky Phelan's case and when it came to several hundred other women who were not informed of false negatives. Senior people within the national screening service knew the details of Vicky Phelan's case and they knew that hundreds of other women had not been communicated with. Senior management within the HSE knew those things as well, and the doctors knew those things - maybe not in the hundreds but they knew that their own patients had not been communicated with. People at the very highest levels within the HSE, at the level of direct reporting to Mr. O'Brien, at a senior level within the national screening service and senior consultants, all knew for years that the false negatives had occurred and as of today all of the women still have not been told.

I will start with Dr. Henry. We know that he was made aware of this issue, not just Vicky Phelan's case, but the wider issue of women not being afforded open disclosure, why did he not inform Mr. O'Brien as the head of the HSE, and why did he not act to begin to put in place the measures which are now being put in place, in an emergency response - because this has gone public? Why, when he was told about this, did he not act to ensure that all of these women were afforded open disclosure, as is clearly required under HSE policy?