Dr. Tony Holohan:

I would have contextualised that from my general knowledge of screening. I would have known that this country was one of a large minority that had an organised screening programme in the first instance. It is still the case that the majority of screening programmes across Europe do not have organised clinical audits. Of those that do, the only one where there is an ongoing discussion around open disclosure of facts identified - false negatives - is in the UK. It is not the standard throughout Europe, but we introduced that standard in 2016. We purported through our screening programme to give that information to patients, but the health system did not do that effectively. That is what is at issue in this case.

Clinical audit is a good thing. It would have generated information that should have been fed back to patients. We believed that was happening, as we were told it was. We heard that evidence this morning. The people who were telling us also believed that to be the situation.