Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank all our witnesses. I join Mr. McCallion in expressing sympathy to the family and friends of Ms Laura Brennan. She did absolutely fantastic campaigning work at a time in her life most of us would not have been at all able to do so. She took on the mantle and will always be remembered for the great work she did.

I am struggling with this. I wish to discuss the pathway of communication between the HSE and the Department of Health. I fully appreciate that the witnesses only saw this announcement last night, as did we. It is very clear that advice was given which should have made its way to the Minister. Despite that, at a meeting of this committee on 13 February, Mr. Breslin was happy to confirm that the advice did not get to the Minister. The Tánaiste doubled down on that the very next day. My question is directed at Mr. McCallion.

When clinical advice of the nature communicated by Dr. Flannelly makes its way from the HSE to the Department of Health, is there an expectation that action will be taken? According to her submission, she strongly advised against it. Incidentally, it turns out that she was right about all the things we are discussing here, such as that GPs were not organised, laboratories would not have capacity, the colposcopy services would not have capacity and, worryingly, that it would fundamentally undermine the screening programme. That advice came from senior people in the HSE to the Department. When communicating advice of that nature, can Mr. McCallion outline how he ensures it gets to the right person? It clearly did not on this occasion, or it did and we were misled. I need to understand that.