HSE Chief Tony O'Brien has slammed Crumlin children's hospital for its handling of the colonoscope contamination scare.

Addressing the Oireachtas Health Committee today, Tony O'Brien described the handling of the scare by the hospital as a 'catastrophic failure of the incident management process.'

He also said the HSE was investigating how the hospital blundered in sending incorrect information to patients.

Crumlin originally contacted 18 families of child patients who it believed were potentially affected by the contaminated equipment.

However, today the hospital admitted that seven new patients, separate from the 18 who have since been given the all-clear, were now being contacted about the ESBL colonoscope bug.

Director General Designate Mr O'Brien said no amount of PR spin could mask what had occurred.

The hospital said there would be a formal probe into the source of the infection and how the original estimate identified 18 children.

Crumlin hospital has apologised to 18 families who were wrongly identified as being at the centre of the contamination scare.

This is the second apology it has issued this week, having apologised for the contamination when news of it broke earlier in the week.

Speaking on RTÉ's Morning Ireland, Dr Colm Costigan, Clinical Director of the three Dublin paediatric hospitals, apologised for the distress caused to families.

"It appears what happened was that when we did the quality assurance check on our scopes back on July 6, there were two scopes that didn't pass the test and was contaminated with ESBL."

"Unfortunately, there seems to have been an error, in that the contamination was attributed to the wrong scope," Dr Costigan said.

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