Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The Tánaiste spoke about reassurance and about providing full transparency. These are essential to rebuilding trust and confidence in this necessary programme. This information, however, has had to be dragged out yet again. It was not provided through the HSE or primary care practitioners but on “Morning Ireland”. Surely the first port of contact should not have been “Morning Ireland”. The Government was made aware of the second issue in November. It is now the end of January. There would have been no attempt to communicate if it had not been for the questions that Deputy Micheál Martin asked in the House yesterday. This morning the director of the screening programme said the demand and the backlog of tests is one of the reasons that this second issue was exposed. There is a link.

The most important thing is that we restore confidence.

The Minister may not be available but it is essential that a junior Minister would come to take questions as we do not have ten days. We need to restore confidence immediately.

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