Mr. Jim Breslin:

But the parameters of a clinical audit in a particular part of the health service comprise a very defined issue. It is not necessarily a matter with which one would have an issue contemporaneously, although we now have an issue with it. Clinical audit is not pervasive across our health service. It is part of our health service. Some people are subject to clinical audit but many patients, probably the majority, come all the way through the health service and they are not subject to clinical audit. In and of itself, the information being held somewhere would not have been of sufficient import to get to me or a Minister contemporaneously. It became an issue when, within five days of us being told one version, it was immediately retracted and the opposite was told. Unfortunately, within the five-day period, the briefing had gone out. The director general had referred to it. We had briefed the Minister. We had briefed the Government in regard to that. I considered it a serious issue, as did the Minister, and he put it into the House as soon as he learned of it. That was the context for that.