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

-----that I would do as Taoiseach or as a Deputy. That is not the way our lives work. It is certainly not the way Government works. One is not able to tell everyone of everything one does on every given day. It is a fair question that people have asked as to why I did not discuss it with the Minister for Health at the time. The truth is that, like many things, it is probably because events were moving on. This was done. This deal was going to be ratified and it was going to be going through. I was looking at the other things that were happening in health at the time. What were we talking about? In that same period, we had the issue of the 80,000 smear test backlog and we had the PwC report on the national children's hospital. They were the kinds of things I was discussing with the Minister for Health. This was a done deal. This was going to be ratified. This was something that we were glad we had done. It was not an active live issue in the way it is now.

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