Dr. Peter McKenna:

I offer this by way of explanation rather than by way of excuse. In these particular circumstances, there was a dispute as to who had the responsibility to disclose this information to the patients. Did the duty lie with the programme that had collected the information about the audit or did it lie with the clinicians? That degree of disagreement can be seen coming through the correspondence the Deputy has. It was not that there was a decision not to tell. Unfortunately the discussion centred on who should tell and this was the subject of the disagreement.