Mr. Tony O'Brien:

The HSE fully participated. As the Chairman will be aware, in the course of any engagement with the media there is often a discussion about how things should proceed, and there may be a difference of views regarding the level of co-operation. I do not know the details about whether "Prime Time" wanted something that it did not get but it certainly received opportunities to film interviews with the people it requested. I know this from having watched the programme and being aware of some of those interviews taking place.

In regard to HIQA, I received a copy of the first draft of the report with a request that I act in a representative capacity to provide feedback on it. My first question was about what that meant and my second question was on whose behalf I would be responding, in other words, who else had been provided with copies. On reading the report and seeing to whom it might apply, who participated and who, in the ordinary course, I would have expected to be given an opportunity to respond to HIQA as part of its validation process, I became concerned when I discovered that nobody who ever occupied the post of national director of acute hospitals had received even one sentence.

I discovered that the then national director of quality and safety had received one sentence, the then deputy director general of the HSE had received one paragraph, and that no nurse or midwife in Portlaoise had received anything at all.