Mr. Ciarán Breen:

We did not state that we felt it would fail. We acknowledged in our defence that there had been a breach of duty by the HSE's cervical screening and the HSE via the consultant in not telling Ms Phelan. The only point that we put into that note for the Minister was an issue of exemplary damages which might accrue to the State in respect of that. We indicated that in the absence of malice, the claim would not be made out. One of the reasons we said that was because, when it was put to Ms Phelan's expert whether he thought there was malice on the part of the State in the delay in notifying Ms Phelan, he said there was not. It was just a legal point.