Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 13 December 2018

Public Accounts Committee

Business of Committee

9:00 am

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

If I can finish, on reading this it looks like that there is a fairly short timeframe for providing these slides. I have been talking to some of the people involved. Some of the applications, included in these 18, go back to April. A fresh application, however, came in. It is not acknowledged anywhere that the original application for these slides goes back to last April and May, in some situations. It gives the impression that it is a shorter duration by virtue of the fact that there was a second application.

The key issue here is the format in which slides or photographs are produced. I refer to them being usable in the event of a court case. There was to have been a meeting with the Minister for Health, Deputy Harris. That was cancelled at very short notice, something like 12 hours notice, to the great disappointment of the 221 Plus group. This is one of the issues that would have featured at that meeting. Much of information here is accurate but there is one item of information that certainly takes a liberty - and a significant liberty.

The failure to begin with was that people were not given information about their own health. That has now been repeated because some people, albeit a small number, have to go to court to determine whether these records can be released. I do not think we were given any kind of indication that there was a dispute when the HSE was before this committee. For me, that is misleading this committee.

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