Mr. Tony O'Brien:

The issue here was that the audits they had done were in relation to cases notified from places of treatment. The reason the issue arose in respect of the Dáil, as the Deputy referenced - the difficulty with which the Minister was faced - was that in the white heat of the process of the serious incident management team, what was communicated to the serious incident management team was that the audit had related to all cancers in that period, rather than that they had only related to cases notified in a particular way. That is what led to the Minister, myself and colleagues in the Department believing that the audit was about a wider group of patients than it actually was. We will get to the bottom of why that was communicated in that way. There could be a number of reasons for it but clearly that was a significant issue for us giving rise to a difficulty for the Minister in having confidence in the information he was being given. That was corrected as soon as the serious incident management team identified the problem on Tuesday afternoon and that very day, he clarified the matter in the Dáil Chamber.