Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I wish to discuss two final matters on the clinical side. I will then come to the question of thalidomide.

I have been trying to get my head around things. I have a personal involvement so I apologise if my question was not clear enough at a previous meeting. Mr. Breen was not here but the question arose in a different context.

We want to get value for money. We also want an effective public health service that runs smoothly, and we are trying to reduce the number of cases. I had an involvement in a review. That pushed me to look at how many independent reviews of various incidents were carried out by University Hospital Galway. I had thought I had made clear how many reviews were undertaken. There are different types of reviews but I specifically asked about independent reviews. This is fundamental to helping to keep costs down. My question related to the cost of all external reviews or investigations of patient care at University Hospital Galway in the past ten years. I received an extraordinary note in reply to my question. It states that following a search for the information requested, the hospital was advising me that it did not have a system to record the number and cost of all external reviews and-or investigations of patient care. Could someone explain to me how it is possible that there is no system in place for recording all of the investigations and their costs? Is such a system not fundamental to avoiding litigation and learning?