Mr. Jim Breslin:

The 2016 material was not escalated to me, and as the crisis has developed in recent days, I have become aware of the documentation which was put together. I appreciate the way the Deputy has put the question across in terms of the engagements we have had and what he has taken away from those engagements. I have been very clear and consistent throughout the process that there was a significant trawl of documentation under way in the Department of Health and I was not in a position to be definitive until we got to the end of that process. What happened on Thursday was that we effectively switched focus into a very focused look at some particular records to try to generate them. We had a significant trawl under way and I explained that to people as they asked me exactly what the Department knew on the overall issue.

The other question concerned the potential loss of public confidence. The generality of service delivered within health care is intimately involved with interaction with patients. There is almost no situation, other than in the back office, where issues being dealt with are not being dealt with with patients. There was a distinction around this which was that it was a quality assurance programme that was retrospective and did not bring someone in to tell him or her that he or she had a diagnosis of which he or she was unaware.