Legal delays: The Health Service Executive has blamed legal difficulties for the fact that the report reviewing deaths at Leas Cross was not published until yesterday.
The report, compiled by Prof Des O'Neill, had been submitted to the HSE last May.
It was then handed over to the HSE's legal advisers, who said it could not be published in the form in which it had been presented.
They advised that in the interest of natural justice, all parties who were named or referred to in the report should be given an opportunity to comment on criticism levelled at them in the report.
The HSE asked Prof O'Neill to revisit his report and get responses from those named in it. However, Prof O'Neill refused, insisting he had finished his review in line with the terms of reference he had been given. He had been asked to review documents only.
What the HSE was now seeking from him, he said in September, was that he go outside his terms of reference and hear oral and written submissions from people mentioned in his report, which was akin to the setting up of a tribunal of inquiry, at which these people would be legally represented and for which he would require judicial training.
The HSE admitted subsequently that the terms of reference it set for Prof O'Neill should have been broader.
It was forced to reconsider how to go about publishing the report.
It finally sought written submissions itself from those clearly identifiable in the report and their responses were appended to the report published yesterday.
The HSE stressed that those submissions should be read in conjunction with the full report.