Fergus O'Dowd (Louth, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The facts of all of this emerged not from a statement from the Minister or a statement from the HSE, but from a report in the national media in The Irish Times. Why was a statement in regard to it not made by the HSE? How can we believe the HSE when it obviously kept this information from public view? We would not know of it if The Irish Timeshad not put it into the public domain, and the Minister would not know of it either. He only learned of it this morning like ourselves. Let us be honest and factual about this matter. Such incidents have happened before. People have died before their time. The result of a previous inquiry stated that somebody would not have died if they had been caught in time and their X-ray had been read properly. That is a fact.

The Minister stated in his reply that "Drogheda and Connolly hospitals are currently carrying out a preliminary audit over a short defined period". We do not know what is going on. The Minister said that "reviews will be necessary in a number of other hospitals where the locums worked". What is going on? The Minister is badly served - as are we - by the statement he read out. I want to know the full facts as I live beside a major hospital that serves the north east. The commitments we were given that this would never happen again in 2008, 2009 and 2010 were absolute and they were accepted, but this is happening today.

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