Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I want to move on to a couple of more questions. I was quite appalled by the means of communicating the terrible news - Stephen Teap went into it last night - to some of the families. They were put into a holding room. There was a mixture of people who had family who had died and women who were going to receive news that they had had a false negative and had gone on to have cervical cancer. They also talked about the social care programme that was announced last week and said they had not been contacted. This was after a catastrophic event. Have no lessons been learned about how to deal with people who should be at the centre of this and not part of some sort of administrative process? Is there any thought put into the recipients of the so-called services that will be provided? Is the Department of Health talking to the HSE? Who is talking to the people who were directly affected? I was completely appalled by it.