Kate O'Connell (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Mr. O'Brien referred to the memo as "reassuring" and said the figure of 209, out of 1,400 plus, would not alert. What is that based on? Is it based on clinical knowledge? Without knowing what the actual rate should be, how can he read a memo in his position and make that assumption?

In the data reconciliation process, the two-way data does not seem to have been transferred from the National Cancer Registry, in this case to the CervicalCheck people. It seems that when the audit process started, for the first two years the audit data were used for education and training purposes and they were only used for patient purposes subsequently. There is a definite swing to a focus on academia, education and data, rather than the patient. We spoke last week on this. There is an issue when one does not have clinicians in positions of management. If a clinician was in charge, I firmly believe patients' needs would have been to the fore.

Mr. O'Brien talked about there not being a joined-up process when the systems kicked in. That is a very serious admission to make because it says that the process did not work when it kicked off. If Mr. O'Brien is admitting that the HSE cannot even communicate in a joined-up way to serve a population the equivalent to that of Manchester, he is admitting that it is not fit for purpose. Mr. O'Brien also spoke about the corporate knowledge of the team. I agree that just firing everybody who was in charge would get us nowhere but the way the corporate management team did its business does not seem to be the gold standard. I am not sure how much value its corporate knowledge is; can Mr. O'Brien elaborate on this?

It is extremely strange that it is not as simple as putting a reference number into a sheet and pulling up a memo or a circular. If the memo is not to hand, it appears as though no one can get it for Mr. O'Brien. As for Mr. Breslin not knowing whether he got the memo, how does the Department get memos? Where does it put them? Does it put them in a box in a corner? What way is it to run a business when it is not known how to find a memo or who definitively crafted a circular? Surely, if someone writes a circular there is a reference number showing who did it. I cannot understand this.

One reason for not having a statutory inquiry immediately was to avoid a pause in delving into things but Mr. O'Brien told me on a couple of occasions that a matter was for the scoping inquiry. That, however, is exactly what this committee, as well as members of Opposition parties who met the Minister, did not want. We did not want the answer to be that you could not talk about it because there was going to be a scoping inquiry or a statutory inquiry.

I ask Mr. O'Brien to say how he deemed himself qualified to read a memo and make an assessment that it was reassuring and did not raise alarm bells.