Helen McEntee (Meath East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I cannot be any clearer on this. The Minister does not have the report. She does not have recommendations. While elements have been unhelpfully published in online articles, the report has not been presented to the Minister. It stands to reason that while this work is being done, the hospital is not going to sit still and say it will wait for everything. It knows it needs to change its practices. That is why it has put new multidisciplinary teams in place. It knows it is important to write out and to engage with the families as it has identified them because those figures have been intentionally put into the public domain to try to alleviate any concerns that they are escalating beyond anything we would have thought. That work is under way.

It is simply not the case that the Minister has and is working on a concrete set of recommendations and is not telling anybody. The report has not been finalised and presented to her, but once it has been, the Minister will first and foremost engage with families, Cappagh hospital, CHI and of course will engage with the Dáil to see what we need to do now and what the next steps are. Where there are recommendations and changes that need to be made in procedures and patient and client engagement in our hospitals, they can proceed and start immediately.

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