Ms Anne O'Connor:

What we saw was in respect of the particular practice. It was very specific. The individual was a doctor, not in a training programme. We will know more and the assurance will come from the processes we are now embarking on. There are a couple of important points in the Maskey report. One is that the operational guidance that exists nationally is sound. It was not being implemented. We have to start there and say that if we have guidance that took a lot of development, we have to assure ourselves it is being used by the teams. That is one step. The prescribing practice was a specific issue in that area and the audit will give assurance that it is not a systemic issue.

We do not believe that it is. The audit will hopefully tell us that but we will obviously have to wait to see what the outcome is.

It is important to remember that in our health services we employ professionals who are, in the main, registered in their own right as practitioners. They have to complete a range of different types of continuing education in order to maintain registration. There are other bodies that oversee the registration. There is an assurance that comes through that as well in the context of people coming through those processes. As stated at the outset, I cannot guarantee 100% that there are no issues that we have missed.