Dr. Tony Holohan:

What I said honestly to Deputy Cullinane and the committee last week was what I understood those memos to mean. I had not seen that memo in two years. I was seeing it for the first time in two years in the same way as the Deputy was seeing it when it was brought to the committee. What those memos show over that time period, as the Secretary General has set out, was the progression of the issuing of letters over a period of time, with the clear intention of that information being shared with patients. I would have understood that in the following way. That was a clinical audit arrangement. Clinical audit as part of cervical screening only happens in a minority of countries in Europe. The only other country we have been able to identify that has an expressed policy of openly disclosing those findings to patients is England. I would have been able to see and understand, with my knowledge and background, from a professional point of view, that these were developments and enhancements that placed our screening programme well ahead of other screening programmes in the world. That was the knowledge we had at the time.