The advice I have is that people from Cork University Hospital and other procurement experts are doing it. I will provide details on exactly who is doing that.

It is an external review that, in the first instance, I believe will be reporting to CHI and the chief clinical officer of the HSE.

We need very clear answers to every question the Deputy just raised and many more, end to end. What has happened here is very serious. There is an external group which is reporting to the CHI board. However, I take the Deputy's point and agree with her point about trust. There must be trust in the answers. I absolutely take that on board. In addition to that, if we need to do an additional short, independent one, we can. Dr. Nayagam's review is also looking at the issue of the springs and all of these questions.

Two separate groups are looking at this. We have discussed one. The second is Dr. Nayagam. We need to be clear that nobody will be waiting a year for a view from Dr. Nayagam and this review. There will be interim reviews and it is being set up such that the pressing clinical issues are reported on this year. The reason people are saying the review in its totality may take a while is that I and others have insisted it is a broad review. That takes time. The clinical safety issues we are discussing right now will be …

When was I informed of what?

What I had was Deputy Murphy's parliamentary questions. He can correct me if I am wrong but the information I have is that the first time his parliamentary questions were specific to the point that these could be identified was 27 July. If I am wrong, please feel free to correct that.

Okay. They were submitted in July. I have looked carefully at this. As I see this, the Deputy asked a series of escalating questions. To begin with, they were quite vague. They are all on the record. They were about whether CHI uses non-medical-grade equipment. I believe it replied in good faith that, to the very best of its knowledge, of course it did not use non-medical-grade equipment. It was only in the second week of July, I believe, and I am more than happy to be wrong on this, as I read it, that the Deputy's…

I will have to check. Let me answer the question directly again to be absolutely clear. I was informed of this issue, and my date might be slightly wrong, I believe on 4 August.

I will have to check and I will have to check if his officials passed on those comments, as that would normally be what is done. Again, the details to CHI that allowed them to find what it was the Deputy was pointing to happened in the second week of July. It was discovered in the following weeks, when they looked into it, and I received a report on it on 4 August. I then asked a series of detailed follow-up questions on the report that I got.

I will have to take a look at the parliamentary question answer. The chief clinical officer got a copy of the report in July, a copy of the report will have been sent to me in August, there was a disclosure process gone through with the families and then there was a proposed publication date after full disclosure had been gone through with the families. The report in The Ditch was ahead of full disclosure having happened with the families, which led to the report’s publication being accelerated. Specific to the pub…

On the parliamentary questions, I know this is never satisfactory, and I got the same answer when I was on that side of the House and I never found it particularly satisfactory. However, I receive about 15,000 to 20,000 parliamentary questions a year, so colleagues will appreciate that none of us can write all of our own responses to every parliamentary question. However, I am responsible for them and it is my name at the bottom of the page. On the question the Deputy asks, I am not aware, nor am I aware of any sug…

I am very open to an external review telling me whatever it finds. What I can tell the Deputy right now is that this is the first time I have heard this. This is the first time I have heard about an FOI. The clear advice I have been given is that there were serious patient safety incidents, the protocols were followed, the patients and the families were engaged with and I was informed. To Deputy Cullinane’s earlier point, arguably, I was informed in too tardy a manner on the July one. In the September-October-Novem…

That is not what I said at all. What I said is that there will have been communication between officials and advisers between the Department of Health and the Department of the Taoiseach. I believe there was communication in July and August and, obviously, in September, and we can provide a full timeline as to those exact communications.

Yes, I do.

It is important to say, though, that we receive 20 to 30 of these patient safety incidents on an ongoing basis. Yes, it is worthy of communication. There was communication, I believe, in July and August, and the Taoiseach and I obviously spoke about it in person in September.

Again, that is not what anybody has said. I have the transcript between Deputy Murphy and the Taoiseach and I have looked at that. I became aware of the issue with the springs in August. It was not part of either of the reviews. It would appear, based on everything we have seen, that CHI and the reviewers did not know there was an issue in terms of these springs not being medical-grade springs. It was through the parliamentary questions submitted by Deputy Murphy that work was done and that was uncovered, and that …

I can try to get a timeline for the Deputy but this is an ongoing conversation between me, my Department and CHI. The Deputy will be aware of the waiting list action plan. We have three high-priority clinical areas-----

I am answering the question. This is relevant and speaks directly to the Deputy’s question. There are three clinical areas specifically called out within the waiting list action plan, and they are bariatrics, gynaecology and paediatric orthopaedics, so there is an ongoing conversation at a very senior level in the Department, the HSE and Children's Health Ireland on this. Paediatric orthopaedics, including spinal, has been a top priority right through the waiting list action plan, so these conversations are going o…

The first conversation will have been when it became apparent-----

That is a clinical question, and I am not a spinal surgeon. However, it is exactly the kind of question that can be reviewed and I believe will be looked at through the upcoming external review.