Seán Fleming (Laois, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Neither the Apple company nor the Irish Revenue Commissioners can access the account in the meantime.

No statements of accounts have been submitted in the past week. The only item on the work programme, and I will return to the main topics of correspondence later, is our meeting with the National Treatment Purchase Fund and Nursing Homes Ireland on 14 June. No further changes have been made.

I will return to discussing the various items of correspondence that have been received in terms of the cervical cancer issue. I will work in reverse. I note that Deputy Darragh O'Brien has indicated. Yesterday, we received a letter from Mr. John Connaghan, director general of the HSE. Interestingly, he was the interim director general last week but he has written his signature above the title of director general on correspondence that was issued this week. I believe he has a big job ahead of him. We were concerned because we were given evidence that people had informed the State Claims Agency that all of the women involved had been informed about their audit, whereas the State Claims Agency wrote back last week and said very straight that this was inaccurate, so we asked the HSE to respond accordingly. We need to discuss the matter, which is a culmination of some of these issues in CervicalCheck. I ask the secretariat to display the letter, No. 1348, on the screen so everyone has it in front of them. People can view the correspondence on the screen now. It reads:

At the request of the HSE, SCA officials met with officials of the HSE, including Mr J Gleeson Programme Manager CervicalCheck.

The purpose of the meeting was to clarify the apparent difference as to the content of a telephone call between the SCA legal team and Mr J Gleeson which occurred during the trial of V Phelan v HSE and another. The context of the telephone call was to discuss matters pertaining specifically to the case. The issue of all the other women (the subject matter of the audit) being informed arose as a brief discussion issue.

While Mr Gleeson cannot recollect the specifics of the conference call with the SCA in April 2018, we clarified Mr Gleeson's understanding was consistent with the record of the call. Mr Gleeson's understanding of the communication with the women was that at the time he assumed the women had been informed by their treating physicians. We now know that this was not the case.

Hence the HSE and SCA are satisfied that the apparent difference around the understanding of the communication with the women has now been resolved.

Obviously that is to the satisfaction of the HSE and the State Claims Agency.

My issue, as Chairman of the Committee of Public Accounts, is we are given very definitive, categoric evidence in public session and immediately afterwards we find it is not the case. That is a problem for the committee in terms of witnesses appearing before us. It is not about the cervical cancer issue; it is about evidence. The committee has to have an absolute assurance that evidence given here is correct because if it is not correct we are all on the wrong track. That is the issue I am concerned with. Deputy O'Brien indicated he wished to speak.