Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses for coming here today. I wish Mr. Connaghan the very best of luck in his role. I would like to make a point to Mr. Breslin, as head of the Department, and Mr. Connaghan, as the interim director general for the HSE. Over the past two weeks this committee spent about eight hours with various senior representatives from the Department, HSE and CervicalCheck and we asked a lot of questions about who knew what. I do not want to get into a Jesuitical conversation about exactly how questions were phrased, but the distinct impression I was left with after eight hours in this room was that the first the office of the director general in the HSE and Department knew about any of this was 2008. It was very disappointing then to discover through the Committee of Public Accounts that there were detailed memos between the HSE and the Department as far back as 2006.