David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Members have just received the memorandum and are still going through it. We need time to read the full detail and reflect on its content before calling for resignations. However, I share Teachta MacSharry's view that the memorandum crafted in 2016 was a letter of containment.

It was a policy of containment. It strikes me that if I were one of the women reading the memo prepared for the director general and read by him, I would be absolutely livid. What jumps from the pages is that the authors of the memo were basically saying to the director general that he needed to be concerned about the media reaction; not about patients or the women, but about the media reaction. Even in terms of the next steps, nowhere does it say all women should be informed, nowhere does it say anything about open disclosure, and nowhere does it express concern for the welfare of women and patients. Next steps include to pause all letters, await advice from solicitors and decide on the order and volume of dispatch to mitigate any potential risks. I imagine, given the next line, that the potential risks are not risks to individuals but risks to the corporate body which is the HSE. The next step is to continue to prepare a reactive communications response for a media headline that "screening did not diagnose my cancer". It is profoundly shocking that this was the issue which was uppermost in the minds of the people who wrote that memo. Is there anyone from the HSE here - Dr. Crowley, Ms Lennon or Mr. Woods - who can give any response on behalf of the HSE to this memo?