Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

In my case, the answer to all of the Deputy's questions is "No" and, to the best of my knowledge, the answer is also "No" with respect to all of the other individuals concerned.

The Department of Health will publish documents today. These follow on from a search of records and documents in the Department which has been ongoing for some time. To give the Deputy a rough idea, 40 million emails and other documents have passed through the Department of Health since 2008. As he can imagine, a document search of that scale, even if targeted, is time consuming.

In the dossier to be produced this afternoon, on which Opposition spokespersons will be briefed in advance and a press conference will be held, roughly a dozen documents will be released. These include memorandums between the Department of Health and Health Service Executive at official level, minutes of meetings of officials of the HSE and Department of Health and emails between various officials. The memos and documents confirm that no concerns were raised about patient safety, the efficacy and accuracy of the programme or the accuracy of any particular laboratories. The only issues dealt with in the documents relate to open disclosure or, rather, the non-open disclosure of information to patients and doctors. The documents confirm that these issues were not escalated to Ministers, advisers or the Secretary General. This follows on a full study of all memorandums, submissions, management board meeting minutes, ministerial management advisory committee, MinMAC meeting minutes and all significant issue papers.

It is the practice in the Department of Health that for every ministerial management board meeting a document called a significant issues paper is prepared so that the Secretary General, the management board, the Ministers and advisers can be made aware of those significant issues. The documents released today will show that none of this was escalated beyond the office of the CMO and the office of acute hospital services and that the concerns the Department was dealing with were concerns about open disclosure and about CervicalCheck passing on information about the audit to clinicians. There is nothing about concerns around laboratories, the efficacy, the accuracy of the programme or patient safety, but that will all become apparent today.

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