Dr. Stephanie O'Keeffe:

Yes. It is not like there is a strategy document that has a whole thing in it. It is a series of documents that one would typically need if one was going out to the media. For example, one has the Q&A and the information note for health care professionals and consultants. Also part of the communications strategy would have been that the people would have had media preparation. That would be a normal part. Right across my functions, I have got policy priority programmes in relation to sexual health and child health, and I will make sure that all those people have media training.

We have issues arising in relation to preparation. Our HIV and sexual health leader will have media training. Not everybody in the organisation at a senior level - Dr. Connors, for example - will be aware of all the media training that I will do with my colleagues when there are significant issues that need to be discussed in public so as to communicate them. For this particular work, there was, as the Deputy rightly said, an acknowledgement that there was a risk in relation to the effectiveness of the programme and it was putting in place a series of mechanisms to ensure they would be prepared when that inevitably happened. The shocking, horrendous thing here is that it happened and we did not realise that the issue was going to be that the women were not informed. All of those documents were developed on the basis that women would have been informed.