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

I am reluctant to answer for those reasons. However, I know that, since 2015, HPV testing has already been introduced in circumstances where a low-grade or high-grade abnormality is identified. The plan now is to move to primary screening whereby the test is done for HPV first and cytology later. At least that is my understanding, but I would be afraid to answer that question in too much detail without knowing what is involved.

The patient-safety package was published in October or November 2015 at the patient safety conference, which, if I recall correctly, was held in Dublin Castle. Any discussions I had with the CMO about the form of open disclosure we would select happened in 2015 before the publication of that package and many months before the first memo on the CervicalCheck audit arrived in the Department of Health, which was in March 2016. I believe the first memo arrived on 29 March 2016. I ceased to be Minister for Health in the first week of May 2016. Hence, there was a period of about five weeks during which I could have been informed and there was an opportunity to do it. There was a significant issues paper and a MinMAC meeting in that five-week period. As the former Minister of State, Kathleen Lynch, who was present and received those papers, can attest, it was not in the significant issues paper or raised at that MinMAC meeting. During that period, however, the audit was still under way. Perhaps this explains why that was the case.

It is proposed that the HSE board will have between nine and 12 members. There will be a CEO - the director general post will evolve into the role of CEO - and there will be a chair. I can understand some of the confusion on that. I know that in past cases, for example, that relating to CIÉ, there was an executive chair who was effectively the chair and the CEO. That is not intended in this case. There will be a CEO. The chair will not be a member of the executive, but will have an enhanced role. Rather than being a chair who attends monthly meetings, the person appointed will have a greater involvement and will be asked to devote one day or two days a week to the job. Given the size of the organisation - 110,000 employees and a €16 billion budget - it would be more appropriate to have a chair who puts in a day or two a week and that is what is intended.

Deputy Burton asked about the regional boards. To a certain extent, they exist already. The hospital groups all have boards and these have been populated. However, they do not exist on a statutory footing. The plan, in line with what is proposed in the Sláintecare report, is to bring the hospital groups and the community health organisations together into a single combined hospital group.

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