Mr. John Gleeson:

I was involved with the then clinical director of the screening programme in compiling it. On the particular point the Deputy mentioned, and the reference to whether a woman was deceased, we conducted this review long after the diagnosis of cancer and when we were notified the woman may have been deceased. Our understanding of data protection legislation is that it was her information and it was not to be told to anyone else. In other words, putting it on the file would make it legally accessible to anyone granted legal access to the file. This may have been a wrong interpretation. We did allow for clinical judgment as we did not feel we were in that position. We did not know what the particular circumstances of a woman were when a letter was written. We did, by phone, text and email, consult among various members of the team to try to get it right.