Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

On page 2 of the memo published it is stated the "National Screening Service and Jerome Coffey, Head of the National Cancer Control Programme, have advised the Department in writing that they do not consider this to be a patient safety incident". Will the Minister share with the House when that advice was given and when exactly the Department knew? I do not think it is credible that the it knew but that the Minister did not. However, that is what we are being led to believe. Will the Minister to confirm when the Department knew?

On the same page of the memo it is stated BLM solicitors "have shared a copy of an expert report with the SCA which we understand will form part of the laboratory's defence in the context of liability and causation". Again, no date is given. I find it a little curious that there are no dates given in this document. There does not seem to be any information on when it was sent or received. It does not seem to have been stamped. The two specific questions I have posed are really important.

Elsewhere in the memo we read that the Department "is in consultation with the HSE in regard to their preparation of a press statement on the matter". We have all sat through criticisms from all sides of the House of the obsessive fixation of certain members of the Government with spin. I suggest it was very much known that this was going to cause an issue, that it would be a national incident which would be added to the list of scandals that have surrounded the Government because in the briefing note to the Minister we see that preparations were being made for the inevitable press fallout.

My final question on this section relates to the assertion that Jerome Coffey advised that the National Cancer Control Programme did not consider this to be a "patient safety incident". It is absolutely outrageous that the NCCP would not consider it to be a patient safety incident. The memo was prepared for the Minister. I ask him to let me and everyone else listening know whether he regards it as a patient safety incident. Does he regard it as something that should have that tag? I certainly would consider it to be a patient safety incident.

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