Mr. Jim Breslin:

In respect of the first question, I am very much with the Minister. The other thing I would say is that I am in the midst of a process of assembling all the records within the Department. I cannot be definitive until I have completed that process. Nothing has arisen in the process to date either in respect of records or asking people in different units that might have information to give me cause to believe there is information within the Department that has been withheld. However, I will complete the process. The process being undertaken by Dr. Scally will be very important in judging the significance of all the information we hold within the Department but at this stage, I do not have anything to tell the committee beyond what that of which it is already aware.

I became aware of the National Cancer Registry Ireland issue last Tuesday, very shortly before briefing the Minister. This was a current issue. Although I was not there, I understand that the briefing that was supplied to the serious incident management team and the Department about National Cancer Registry Ireland over the course of four or five days was inaccurate in that period. We were told one thing at the start of the process and by Tuesday, we were told the opposite. It was a specific cause for concern that we had told the Minister something that turned out to be inaccurate in that very short space of time. I have no information organisationally over a course of earlier periods. I will say that in general, we do know and are working on information governance within the total health system, the unique health identifier and other aspects to try to improve the flow of information between organisations and much more reliable information but I had no personal knowledge of this issue before the past few days.