James Lawless (Kildare North, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I do not need to tell the Minister the concern this issue has raised. I am aware he has been moving with might and main since this happened to address it but one of the main concerns which arises from this issue is the public's trust and confidence in the system. It is so important for preventative medicine, in particular, that we encourage the public to engage with services provided, be it for check-ups, scans, diagnostics, vaccines and all of the different procedures and preventative treatments that are so important to having a proactive healthcare system. When these issues occur, it undermines and risks the confidence and trust of the public and makes it so much harder for all of us to collectively rebuild that and get the message and word out there that people must engage with the health system and go to one's scans, check-ups and follow the procedures that people are advised to take up.

I have a couple of questions on this issue. How did it actually come to light? I believe the Minister has touched on it already but how did it specifically break? How soon after was it addressed by those actions being halted? I would have thought that there were sufficient checks and balances in a system which is a high risk and high impact system. If something went wrong in surgery, I would have thought there would have been a significant degree of oversight, be that from a monitoring consultant, from an audit or from sample reviews because it is difficult to understand how something like this could happen in what one imagines is a highly regulated, monitored, and managed system. I am struggling to come to terms with how that could have happened in the middle of all this.

When I have asked all of the questions, can the Minister then come back to me? Is that the best way to do it?

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