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

I do not agree. These are the facts, and I am happy to restate them. It was not actually a contract; it was an agreement about a contract. I gave a copy of that agreement to Dr.Ó Tuathail, who was president of the NAGP at the time. I should not have done this. I accounted to the Dáil for it last November and I apologised for it. I acted on my own judgment and nobody is responsible for this, other than me - no officials, no advisers and not the Minister, Deputy Harris. I am sorry that I have brought them into this in any way.

The Deputy is trying to reheat an old political controversy today. He is largely going back over old ground. He could be talking about Covid, the battle against the virus and the pandemic. He could be asking about getting schools reopened. He could be asking about the economic crisis and the people who have lost their jobs and may lose their businesses. It says much about the Deputy's priorities as a person and those of his party that he is trying to go on this line of attack again, on an issue that was dealt with in November.

I made three public statements on the matter at the time and answered questions as best I could, based on my knowledge and recollection of events that happened two years ago. I can only answer for myself; I cannot answer for other people. It is up to the Deputy the either accept my explanations or reject them. It is his choice. However, the House heard about, and voted on, this last November.

For clarity, the document that I gave Dr. Ó Tuathail was the 3 April version. I got it from the Department of Health. I asked the Minister, Deputy Harris, for a version of it and he gave it to me. I did not retain that version. I then asked my special adviser, who looked after health issues, to get a copy of it again. She already had a copy. That is the copy that I gave Dr. Ó Tuathail. We released the document under a FOI request. The Deputy has that document. He knows the differences between that document and the final document, as published. Last November he went to the trouble of counting these differences. There was and is no dispute that there were differences, but they were minor ones. The words used by the health officials in the same emails mentioned by the Deputy where that "language and presentation has to be tied up"; "there may be minor additions"; "it has not fully been signed off"; and "we need to agree a date with the IMO for publication". Those are totally prudent things. There was nothing in those emails to suggest that the document was commercially sensitive or that it was secret. As I said in November, had the changes been substantive, they would have had to go back to Cabinet. It did not go back to Cabinet. All the salient details were out there in the public domain.

There was a public launch about it that the Minister, Deputy Harris, and I attended. The IMO issued a detailed statement with the financials, the costings and anything that was of a commercially sensitive nature. There was a Government memo, written by the Department of Health, and sent for information, which stated that engagement had concluded. It was the case that there were some tweaks thereafter. There were some minor additions and changes. This was all known back in November. However, the Government memo stated that engagement had been concluded. It was reasonable for me to believe that that was the case, given that that was in the Government memo produced by the Department of Health. The details were discussed at public meetings, which included hundreds of GPs. Fergal Bowers also posted a tweet, giving detailed information about the contract.

The document was not a Cabinet paper or Cabinet memo and, therefore, did not fall under Cabinet confidentiality in that sense. It was not classified as a budget secret or a secret. Some documents are, but this one was not.

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