Bertie Ahern (Dublin Central, Fianna Fail)

The reason was that one of the senior consultants had concerns about the diagnoses and as I understand it — I want to be fair to people and due process — the mammograms being read by one consultant showed different results to another consultant's reading of them. As I stated, a consultant is on administrative leave because of this. Consultant Ann O'Doherty of St. Vincent's Hospital and BreastCheck is preparing a report which will be published this month. She will cover all aspects of the case.

On Deputy Gilmore's more general question, I understand from what I have read and from previous briefings on setting up national centres that we have more consultants than we need. We have 70 consultants. People ask what have we done during recent years. We have taken on more than 70 senior breast cancer consultants. For our size, population and geographical and regional base it is more than we require. The fact is that we do not follow best international practice because we use 35 locations. This is not the way to do things. The best thing is to get multidisciplinary teams working together on oncology in centralised locations. Of course they can outsource and use modern technology.

When one has 35 hospitals, and as the letter mentioned by Deputy Kenny, they will always look for more equipment. I am not denying that. In this case they were looking for digital technology.

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