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

That would be an important figure for us to know. When a serious issue like this is raised and people are being fobbed off - others can call it any word they like but that is the one I am choosing to use - women want to know how many emails it takes before they are taken seriously. How serious does the volume have to be? I fully appreciate that the Department would have been in receipt of a lot of representations, but women were making representations to the Office of the Minister for Health on the basis that they were concerned, notwithstanding the massive and unacceptable delays that meant they were already outside of that timeframe. They were concerned that, if they were not outside that timeframe, they were heading in that direction. It seems like they knew something was wrong.

They were trying to alert senior people that there was something wrong. It took an awful lot of effort. As the Department has had contact with the individual woman to whom we are referring, the witnesses will know the stress this caused her through her constantly banging on the door trying to raise a case and feeling as though she was being ignored. What was at the heart of what led us here was the fact that women were treated disgracefully within the system. This appears throughout the Scally report. It is very hard for people in my position to understand how any lessons have been learned. The witnesses say that lessons have been learned but in the immediate aftermath, it appears that no lessons were learned.