Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Secretary General of my Department reports to me and he kept me briefed at the appropriate junctures. I published all of those documents in advance. The good news is that the PwC timeline tallies with that. There are two interesting points in the report regarding the governance issue. One is that while it states the governance structure was complex, it also states that it did not impede information flow. The report does not seem to be suggesting to me that that caused that problem.

Crucially, however, there is a line in the report that is very important about the role of my Department and the HSE. I suppose it concerns the Government as well, although it does not name the Government. The report states that the Department of Health and HSE were "impaired", that is the word used, from doing their job because of some of the mistakes or errors made in arriving at accurate figures. A person in government, a Secretary General or someone in the HSE, whomsoever it might be, depends on accurate information from professional firms. I do not want to name individual firms but we hire-----