Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

We will seek clarification from the Department of Health on those issues. The letter does appear to be contradictory and we need an explanation in regard to this. We will ask the clerk to request that information from the Department.

The next item of correspondence is again from Mr. Robert Watt, Secretary General of the Department of Health, dated 4 May, providing information requested by the committee in respect of protected disclosures. This and a number of similar responses were received following our decision at our meeting of 23 March to write to all Departments to request information on protected disclosures since the enactment of the Protected Disclosures Act 2014. We considered 11 responses last week and a further six responses are before us today. The final response has been received and will be circulated for next week's meeting. The committee secretariat has circulated a synopsis of the responses we considered at last week's meeting and an updated version has been added to the folder for today's meeting. There is one outstanding response, which has now been received and will be circulated at next week's meeting.

The Department of Finance's response, No. 574B, advises that the protected disclosures central policy unit states that in general, separate annual reports should be published on protected disclosures rather than just including the information in Departments' annual reports. From the information we have received, this is not happening in all cases. I propose we write to the policy unit in that regard. Is that agreed? Agreed.

Deputy Catherine Murphy has flagged all the responses for discussion.