A letter in 2002 outlining the concern of a consultant about cancer services at Midland Regional Hospital in Portlaoise was seen by then-minister for health Micheál Martin, it has been confirmed.
Opposition parties have called on Mr Martin and Minster for Health Mary Harney to explain before the Dáil why the letter was not held on file in the Department of Health.
The Irish Timeshad sought the letter under the Freedom of Information Act, but it was not found, and the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Health and Children was told yesterday that it was not on record at the Department.
But its existence was confirmed yesterday by one of the senior Health Service Executive (HSE) officials who published a report into failings in cancer services at Portlaoise that led to 130 breast cancer tests being reviewed after nine women being wrongly given the all-clear.
In comments recorded last night and broadcast this morning on Newstalkradio station, Mr Martin said he had seen the letter addressed to him from breast disease specialist Peter Naughton in April 2002.
Mr Naughton's letter expressed "frustration and despair" at the failure to appoint staff and make IR£500,000 available for a cancer unit a year after its approval.
"Services for cancer patients are worse now than they were seven years ago," he wrote.
Mr Martin said the unit was subsequently set up and staff appointed to the hospital under the plan to create eight centres of excellence in cancer care in the State.
He said the reports into the failings at Portlaoise made no mention of the letter and that he was surprised about the amount of attention it was receiving.
"Even prior to that we'd allocated funding for the development of a clinic there, and the health board didn't use that funding initially, and that would seem to me to be the subject matter of the communication from Mr Naughton to the Department," said Mr Martin, who is now Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment.
"Posts were subsequently sanctioned again for there, and . . . between the Health Board and the Comhairle, it clearly took too long in my view to put those posts into play."