Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

It came to pass because we had a separate governance structure for the national children's hospital which was independently chaired. That led to a lot of engagement within the board and with the Department of Health and HSE on the issue. That engagement took place, as the Minister for Health has confirmed, from the end of August through September and October and in early November I became aware of the issue and its scale. From that point until the middle of December, I had a significant amount of engagement on the issue to try to understand why this had happened and the options available to Government. A decision that I recommended was then taken in Cabinet on this matter in the middle of December.