Marc MacSharry (Sligo-Leitrim, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

It would be good practice. I know it is completely different but if a bank employee is in an armed robbery he or she goes through essential counselling. If I am associated with something that did not work out that well, it is reasonable that there would be appropriate action.

I have a couple more questions. It has been an awful long day for the witnesses and I do not want to delay them too much longer. The question to do with the State Claims Agency that led us off on that tangent was whether it ventured any advice on the timing of informing patients. Did it say they should definitely be informed? Did it say tell them as quickly as possible, do not tell them, cool the jets, hasten slowly or anything along those lines in terms of its input into it? What weighting was that given? I suppose Mr. Gleeson and Dr. O'Keeffe are the ones who can answer that question. It is important. It might inform further questioning of the State Claims Agency by us and particularly the weighting that is given to their advice in such a situation. Is it about the money or the patient, as we have seen at times that it has been?

I asked at the last meeting that we would be given a copy of the contract with the labs. The Department of Finance standard position on things like this is that it is commercially sensitive information. I hate that expression. I would ask for a copy of the contract to be sent to us and if the commercially sensitive information is the price, redact the price and send us the rest because there are other aspects of it we are very interested in looking at.

The State Claims Agency answered this question last week but as Mr. Gleeson is present and had some knowledge of the contracts I will ask him. I had asked whether the contract, as it is written, gives any recourse to the State in terms of the potential to pursue the laboratory for the very costly fallout from this part from the indemnity to the patient.