Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I am dumbfounded at how the Department dealt with this issue over the three years from the initial issues being raised to correspondence to the Minister and a meeting with the Minister. I have the pre-notes outlining the approach the Minister was going to take. It is very clear that commitments were going to be given. In the notes, it says that answers to some of the questions would be provided at the time of the finance Bill. It appears that very little, if any, work had been done leading up to that. One of the documents we have, dated 27 October 2021 - which would have been shortly after Dr. McDonagh's resignation letter - deals at the end with a number of issues such as how they were going to try to get the NRH to appoint a new chairperson, which obviously was not successful. The last point, on managing communication, states that given the high profile of the disabled drivers scheme and of the review managing communications and messaging about the DDMBA resignations, it is extremely important and may be useful to discuss with the Minister's advisers the best approach in this regard. We found out from RTÉ on 11 January that there was no longer a board. I find it astonishing that the House was not informed. There was no public communication. There was nothing in regard to this months after an entire board resigned. It is interesting that in response to our freedom of information request, we see all the other letters - you get a log from the Department of Finance which tells you when the letter was created, by whom it was assessed and so on - but there is no log for the letter the Minister sent to Dr. McDonagh, as chairperson. That is quite interesting because it arrived the day after she issued her resignation, while the Department claims it was written beforehand. The log would be very interesting.