Mr. Joseph Hughes:

Karen and I attended the sixth national sepsis summit. Upstairs we were allowed to put out our own pull-up banner, which we paid for ourselves - it was not bought with that money. At one stage I was on record as saying that in our house there was more sepsis awareness material than anywhere else in Ireland. We printed our own leaflets and we paid for our own pull-up banners and t-shirts. We did not have any of that budget.

With regard to the e-learning, I did that myself on the HSE website and I got the certificate for it. If I can do it then anybody can do it. There is a Facebook media spend listed there as well but our campaign, which I do, is more concerned with the social media that does not cost anything. There are differences around what we spent and what was spent on there, according to the two sets of correspondence that I got from the HSE and Deputy McAuliffe. Their sepsis awareness campaign was €30,000. One of the things we can see listed is the sepsis awareness month and world sepsis awareness day public awareness activity to promote awareness of the signs and symptoms. Any time I looked online to see what was being done by the HSE, and around Ireland, on world sepsis day the vast majority of the hospitals had banners that they had made themselves using crayons or markers. They would not have spent money on that and it would not cost much.

The HSE had also appointed a new national sepsis programme manager. I will bring the committee back. When Sean passed away we did not know anything about sepsis. The first thing we did was go onto the HSE website to find out what we could about sepsis. Lo and behold, we found out that there was a national sepsis programme, and there was a name given for the contact. We tried to contact this email address half a dozen times but no email came back. I was a bit frustrated so in the end asked if someone would please answer me. The response I got was that there was nobody in that role. It was still up on the website, however, that this person was still in that role but she was not.

A new programme manager was appointed, Ms Ciara Hughes, and we met with her. Looking back at it now it feels as though they threw the dog a bone and they were keeping me quiet. We sat down and developed some paediatric sepsis awareness leaflets that had Sean's likeness on it. We also did a sepsis awareness video but after Ciara Hughes left there was no contact from the HSE even though I sent at least half a dozen emails. They have said that they appointed a new sepsis awareness programme manager but, again, they did not reach out. The then Minister for Health, Deputy Simon Harris, sat down with myself and Karen and with members of the national sepsis programme. The then Minister assured us that money was going to be put in the budget for sepsis awareness. He asked the people from the national sepsis programme to keep us in the loop. When Deputy Harris left that role we did not hear anything more. As soon as he was gone we did not hear anything from the national sepsis programme either. So, that is where we are at.