Ms Janice Donlon:

Following those allegations of improper information provision, a full audit was carried out on behalf of the HSE. It was an independent audit with an independent chair, Brigid McManus, previously of the Department of Education and Skills. That was carried out in light of the allegations. A desktop analysis was done on a number of services and six, including the IFPA, were chosen for an in-depth, face-to-face audit by the quality and improvement division of the HSE. It was a robust audit on policies, procedures, guidelines and protocols. It involved in-depth interviews with staff members. The audit made 11 recommendations, all of which have been fully implemented. The majority of those recommendations were around improving the policies and procedures that were available in the counselling services. We and the HSE took the broad view that we were here to support the services in terms of our funding and we supported them through additional training, updating our practice guide, our training manual and by helping them to improve their policies and procedures where there was a lack of available information highlighted by the audit. We also implemented a quality framework with all services. All services are signed up to a quality framework that assesses against national standards for crisis pregnancy counselling. These national standards are based on the HIQA Safer Better Healthcare standards. All services now have that implemented within their crisis pregnancy counselling service.