David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Yes. I will just give a very short context on why I think this is important. If we get follow-up information, that will allow us to make a decision next week. It relates to the CervicalCheck audit that was carried out. That resulted in 15 women being identified in 2014 as having a misdiagnosis. My difficulty is that the doctors were not compelled to tell the women of the cancer test errors. That is a clear breach of process and a system failure. Our job here is to look at systems, processes and procedures. There was a High Court judgment yesterday involving a very significant award. I think it was the subcontractor who had to pay the damages but there may be costs for the State. We do not know.

First, there was a clear breach in process where there was a misdiagnosis. Second, a circular was sent stating that clinicians should use their judgment in individual cases where it is clear that discussion of the outcomes of the review could do more harm than good. I find that extraordinary. We had an examination of the issues surrounding the Grace case for exactly the same reasons, namely, process and procedure failures. There could be a cost and I imagine there will be a cost to the State. I do not suggest that we do any work on it because I am aware that there may be a role for the sectoral committee, but could we write to the Department and to CervicalCheck to get as much information as possible?