On behalf of the Social Democrats, I wish the Ceann Comhairle, all Members and all Oireachtas staff a happy and restful Christmas. It has been a rough year for everybody and that includes everybody associated with the Houses of the Oireachtas. Let us hope for better times in 2021.

I raise with the Tánaiste an interview Mr. Paul Reid did on the "This Week" programme last Sunday. He was asked about a contract worth €14 million that the HSE had entered into for ventilators. It seems there were serious problems with that purchase. As I understand it, the ventilators have never been used in a clinical setting. There were quality issues about the ventilators in question. That raises a large number of issues. I fully accept that this was a pressurised period. Everybody was stressed about the situation and there was a rush to get medical equipment. It raises questions, however, about procurement and financial controls, and those are important at any time.

One must wonder how this contract came to be placed. It was placed with a company called Roqu, which had previously only been known for event management and organising festivals in the Middle East. It had a residential apartment address in Dublin city centre and one employee, who was the owner of the company, Mr. Robert Quirke. How much does the Tánaiste know about the awarding of this contract, which resulted in the taxpayer being caught for huge figure of €14 million? What does he know about contacts between the owner of the company, Mr. Quirke, and the HSE? Who contacted whom? Was there any contact regarding this with either the then Minister for Health, the Tánaiste, who was Taoiseach at the time, or anybody else at a political level? How did it come about that contact was made and then the subsequent order was placed? There are serious concerns about this and how it came about. What approvals were required? Were political approvals required for placing that order? I would appreciate if the Tánaiste could answer those questions. We know that a subsidiary of the company in question, another Roqu company, went on to do the testing in County Roscommon and was also involved in developing the health passport app. One wonders how these contracts were awarded to a company with no history and, apparently, no expertise in the health products area.

As the Deputy rightly said, that was a pressurised period. There was a rush on to procure personal protective equipment, PPE, and ventilators and we were seeing what was happening around the world with countries short on PPE and staff getting the virus and dying from it in some cases. We also saw what was happening around the world with a shortage of ventilators and what that meant in New York, London and other places. Thankfully we never got to that situation in Ireland. There was a rush on to buy necessary equipment.

When it comes to contracts, procurement and so on, that is done at agency level not at a political level. I do not have any particular recollection of any involvement in any contracts related to ventilators but I would have to check my records on that. At the time, we were getting a lot of offers of help. Deputy Shortall and other Deputies would have got those offers and I would have got them from Deputies. Any time I got those offers I passed them on to the agency. I certainly would not have got involved in discussions over money. Perhaps others did but I do not recollect that happening so I would have to check up on it. Like I said, there was a rush on at the time to get ventilators quickly.

Many of us would have engaged with the major companies. I remember engaging with Medtronic on ventilators because it is a major company in the west of Ireland making ventilators and exporting them. We wanted to make sure that we got our fair share of them for Ireland.

I asked the Tánaiste about the health passport app.

What was the question again?

I asked about the testing that was done in Roscommon and the development of a health passport app. Does the Tánaiste know anything about those contracts or how they came about?

I do not but again I would have to check my records from the time.

I appreciate that the Tánaiste may not have been prepared for this but I would appreciate it if he would check the records. I accept that many people made contact offering help and business opportunities. It is important to know where that contact came from, given the background of the company and how it came to pass that such an important order was placed with a company that ostensibly had no expertise in this area whatsoever. I would appreciate it if the Tánaiste would check for contacts, either with himself, with the then Minister or with anybody else, and if he would check how the contract came to be awarded or the order to be placed.

I also want to raise those issues again which have been raised with me by the Irish Council for Civil Liberties, ICCL. There are serious data protection concerns about the testing project in Roscommon and the development of the health passport app. Both of those projects involved an element of health research that was retaining personal information and it would appear that there is not compliance in relation to data protection. I ask again that the Tánaiste would raise this with the Minister for Health to provide an assurance that everything is above board in this respect. It is hard to know how a company with that kind of background can come in, get projects like this, be approved and be allowed to operate, using this new app that it has developed with question marks over the security and data protection issues associated with it.

I will raise this with the Minister for Health. I do not personally recall any contact with that company but as I said at the time, we were inundated with people who were offering to help out. We got some legitimate offers and some quite suspect offers. We even set up a website at the time to which people could submit their offers and so on. I imagine that anything provided to anybody in a political role would have been passed on to the HSE, as the relevant authority for procurement.