Dr. Tony Holohan:

No. There was no indication. We had no reason to believe that this was anything other than an isolated case. Again, I do not wish to be long-winded. We receive notifications, formal and otherwise, from lots of sources about individual cases. They come to the Minister; they come through the media; they come from the HSE and many other sources. Our initial focus is to try to determine first and foremost if there is a reason to believe that this leads to a concern about a service and a potential risk to people who are not yet using that service, in other words that the service is not safe. That is our primary line of questioning. That is the basis on which we would interact.

Our next issue to try to satisfy is whether we have any evidence that there is a group of people who have been harmed as a result of contact with the service who now have to be identified and a lookback or something of that nature required. If we can satisfy both of those questions in the negative on the basis of the information, we would take the view that that is an issue that does not have wider patient-safety concerns. That is not in any way to take away from a view that the individual case and the case for an individual might be something of great significance.