Ms Oonagh Buckley:

The issue was less than a miscommunication. The rules in place in the HSE at that time concerning who needed to be communicated with if there was a positive case did not include the people who were residents in that particular hotel, which was, in fact, an emergency centre, because they were not close contacts of the person who was the positive case. The HSE has consistently said in the hearings that there would not have been any circumstances in which it would have been felt necessary to communicate that information to the Department of Justice.

As the Secretary General said, we are no longer responsible for this area but up to the point for which we were responsible for it, we worked extremely closely with the HSE, the Department of Health and public health colleagues in the context of the Catherine Day proposals and the development of the White Paper, which is now being led by the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth, in terms of how to improve, among other things, the health services being offered to asylum seekers.