Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

It was intended to be funny in a situation where probably we should not be.

With regard to accountability and open disclosure, my views and the views of my party on Mr. O'Brien's position are well known and have been well ventilated over a long period of time and I do not propose to rehearse them here. When we were at the committee meeting last week, Mr. O'Brien told us he found out from an app on his phone about Vicky Phelan's case. I am interested to know his views on whether he thinks at this stage, with the full benefit of hindsight, that it was appropriate that as the head of the organisation he was not told about a case such as this, with the massive implications we now see? I am specifically asking because we are discussing whether we need to introduce legislation and whether that legislation would, in fact, have an impact on the culture. To be able to consider whether it would have an impact on the culture we need to understand what the culture is. The culture of the organisation appears to be one whereby people in very senior positions do not feel they need to tell the person who is heading up the organisation a potentially catastrophic piece of information. We all see that it took legs of its own. It is either that as the head he does not encourage people to share that information with him, that the people who are reporting to him think he would not be interested in it, or that the culture of secrecy and cover-up, and all of the other words used, goes right up to the top of the HSE.

With the benefit of hindsight, does Mr. O'Brien now feel that the senior managers should have made him aware and certainly before he found out via an app on his phone?