Dr. Tony Holohan:

I feel tempted to respond to the question on whether we could have done a better job in the leadership of all of this. That is probably true. All I will say, and this is a personal reflection, is that it was a difficult time for everybody. That is not any form of excuse. In the public engagements in the early days of this, there was a concerted effort to do exactly what Deputy O'Connell is reasonably suggesting, namely, to establish and provide clear communications. Good work was done in that regard between the colleges, the HSE and others. It got to a point where communicating in public and doing our jobs in public in the normal way became almost impossible. I am not reflecting on that in terms of us doing our jobs alone, but it impeded our ability to be able to provide the assurance to people who were using the services. That is where the regret is. However, we are a long way down the road, as the Deputy has said, in learning the lessons that come from this. The Minister and many others have made clear publicly that mistakes were made and there are lessons to be learned. Everybody across the board is committed to ensuring the lessons that have been set out for us in the Dr. Scally report and elsewhere will be fully implemented.