Results 43,361-43,380 of 49,836 for speaker:Stephen Donnelly

Select Committee on Health: Estimates for Public Services 2019
Vote 38 - Health (Further Revised) (10 Apr 2019)

Stephen Donnelly: The Minister will be aware that Dr. Flannelly submitted to the committee recently that advice was offered and received by the Department indicating that the offer would fundamentally undermine the programme. This suggests that the Minister's response to my parliamentary question was not true. The Minister stated that any advice he received was significantly after the decision. However,...

Select Committee on Health: Estimates for Public Services 2019
Vote 38 - Health (Further Revised) (10 Apr 2019)

Stephen Donnelly: I thank the Minister. He said he wanted to correct me but Dr. Flannelly's advice was given before the announcement. Mr. Tony O'Brien talked to the Minister the next day and asked him to walk the decision back. There was a world of difference between what the Minister offered and what was subsequently pursued, which was an approach with much greater caveats. My understanding is that the...

Select Committee on Health: Estimates for Public Services 2019
Vote 38 - Health (Further Revised) (10 Apr 2019)

Stephen Donnelly: That is what the Minister offered publicly.

Select Committee on Health: Estimates for Public Services 2019
Vote 38 - Health (Further Revised) (10 Apr 2019)

Stephen Donnelly: The reality is that expert clinical advice was given. Expert clinical advice was ignored. Regardless of what happened during that weekend, because it was a very busy one, the reality is that once the delays, as predicted by CervicalCheck, began to mount through the year, the Minister was contacted by the laboratories, CervicalCheck, oncologists and a variety of people asking him to stop the...

Select Committee on Health: Estimates for Public Services 2019
Vote 38 - Health (Further Revised) (10 Apr 2019)

Stephen Donnelly: -----given that the committee has multiple documented evidence that he was advised repeatedly to stop the test because of the delays it is causing, and given he has admitted that was his call, will he apologise to the 80,000 women who are waiting up to eight to nine months for those test results and to the many more who are waiting for the introduction of the HPV test?

Select Committee on Health: Estimates for Public Services 2019
Vote 38 - Health (Further Revised) (10 Apr 2019)

Stephen Donnelly: It is down the road - the advice from the chief medical officer.

Select Committee on Health: Estimates for Public Services 2019
Vote 38 - Health (Further Revised) (10 Apr 2019)

Stephen Donnelly: I am not suggesting. I am asking the Minister a question.

Select Committee on Health: Estimates for Public Services 2019
Vote 38 - Health (Further Revised) (10 Apr 2019)

Stephen Donnelly: I am not, to be clear. I am saying that Susan Mitchell, in an article on the front page of The Sunday Business Post, directly makes that allegation.

Select Committee on Health: Estimates for Public Services 2019
Vote 38 - Health (Further Revised) (10 Apr 2019)

Stephen Donnelly: That is fine. That is what Susan Mitchell is saying.

Select Committee on Health: Estimates for Public Services 2019
Vote 38 - Health (Further Revised) (10 Apr 2019)

Stephen Donnelly: In the interest of saving time, the question I am asking is-----

Select Committee on Health: Estimates for Public Services 2019
Vote 38 - Health (Further Revised) (10 Apr 2019)

Stephen Donnelly: I will finish on this point and then we will come back to the Estimates. The direct question I put to the Minister is that he has now accepted responsibility for the decision he made. The committee has multiple documented evidence that there was expert clinical advice given to the Department before the announcement and that the director general of the HSE advised him to walk back the next...

Select Committee on Health: Estimates for Public Services 2019
Vote 38 - Health (Further Revised) (10 Apr 2019)

Stephen Donnelly: That is not factually correct.

Select Committee on Health: Estimates for Public Services 2019
Vote 38 - Health (Further Revised) (10 Apr 2019)

Stephen Donnelly: Not at all. Not at that time.

Select Committee on Health: Estimates for Public Services 2019
Vote 38 - Health (Further Revised) (10 Apr 2019)

Stephen Donnelly: The Minister has no idea how we were viewing the director general at that time.

Select Committee on Health: Estimates for Public Services 2019
Vote 38 - Health (Further Revised) (10 Apr 2019)

Stephen Donnelly: I am just correcting the record.

Select Committee on Health: Estimates for Public Services 2019
Vote 38 - Health (Further Revised) (10 Apr 2019)

Stephen Donnelly: We will do our very best. There are not that many of us here. On a procedural issue, the Minister has referred to having an email that many of us have been looking for. Will he make that available to the committee?

Select Committee on Health: Estimates for Public Services 2019
Vote 38 - Health (Further Revised) (10 Apr 2019)

Stephen Donnelly: I thank the Minister. This is a comment more for Mr. Breslin than the Minister. The Parliamentary Budget Office did some excellent work to prepare the committee to look at the Estimates. One of its main findings is that it is impossible to conduct decent scrutiny because the numbers are not comparable. It states that there are a number of challenges in undertaking effective scrutiny of...

Select Committee on Health: Estimates for Public Services 2019
Vote 38 - Health (Further Revised) (10 Apr 2019)

Stephen Donnelly: The Minister does not need to respond to this. I just want to reflect on CervicalCheck. I heard the Minister say to Deputy Lisa Chambers that he believes, knowing what he knows now, that it was the right decision to make. The Minister's Department was told at a principal officer level that his decision would crash the system. The Minister was repeatedly told throughout the year that his...

Select Committee on Health: Estimates for Public Services 2019
Vote 38 - Health (Further Revised) (10 Apr 2019)

Stephen Donnelly: The exact wording we got from Dr. Flannelly was "fundamentally undermine the system and lead to delays". In anybody's language, that is what happened.

Select Committee on Health: Estimates for Public Services 2019
Vote 38 - Health (Further Revised) (10 Apr 2019)

Stephen Donnelly: I accept the Minister's point but the HSE contradicts that. It clearly states that there is a narrative, the Minister's narrative to which he is entitled, that it was going to happen anyway so it was made free. There are two conflicting narratives. One came directly from the HSE to this committee to state that that is not true. It directly attributes two thirds of the backlog to the...