Seán Fleming (Laois, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

It is after page 66 but the page numbers do not continue thereafter; it is not page 67. There are the six requests we made to the State Claims Agency after its appearance before the committee on 10 May. We requested "A note with the details of the interaction with CervicalCheck and the [State Claims Agency] regarding how the communication process to the women affected would operate" and four other items. They were in the minutes of the meeting and the State Claims Agency formally got a letter asking that it reply to those five items. The response to one of the items concerns me. The bulk of the document concerns dealing with period payment orders and so on. The agency is waiting for that section of the Act to commence. The part I want to highlight is on page 2, the addendum to the letter signed by Ciarán Breen, the director of the State Claims Agency. It concerns the communication between the HSE and the State Claims Agency and the communication process to the women affected by the case. He says in his letter:

We have noted that John Gleeson of HSE CervicalCheck, during his evidence to the PAC on Thursday 17^thMay last, indicated that nobody in HSE CervicalCheck informed the State Claims Agency, in or about the time of Vicky Phelan's trial, that all of the women, the subject matter of the audit, had been informed.

Mr. Gleeson's assertion does not accord with the facts.

I will read that statement again. The HSE was here last week giving evidence, and the director of the State Claims Agency flatly contradicts it and says, "Mr. Gleeson's assertion does not accord with the facts." We have an absolute conflict. I want to read the rest of the addendum.

The Agency re-iterates its advices to the Committee that its legal team, comprising Senior and junior Counsel, a solicitor and paralegal, held a teleconference, on 20^thApril 2018, with a senior person in CervicalCheck. Senior Counsel specifically asked if that person, the employee of CervicalCheck, was aware whether or not the affected women had been informed. The reply was that all women whose smear [test] was part of the audit had now been informed or assumed they had been informed by their treating clinicians and this reply was carefully noted and attached to the [State Claims Agency's] legal file.

In giving his evidence to the Committee, Mr. Breen had ascertained the above specifically for the purposes of giving evidence to the Committee on the particular point.

Since that arrived this morning, I have sent a message back to the State Claims Agency asking it to provide us with the name of the person from the HSE who was part of the teleconference and, if possible, a copy of the final note. On the face of it, there are two State agencies involved, two of the most important in the State. One is saying that what was said by one in public session at a meeting of this committee does not accord with the facts. The Committee of Public Accounts has nothing to do with CervicalCheck, but when witnesses appear here, we expect them to speak openly and with candour. This man is disagreeing that that has happened. This is an issue that the committee cannot let run.