Kate O'Connell (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I wish to add to that. To my mind, this clearly is a systems failure. The tragedy of it is that if things do not happen in the appropriate timeframe, which appears to be the case, the disease progresses quickly. The key thing with cervical cancer is the three, six and nine years. In young women in particular it tends to be aggressive and not to be diagnosed early. I booked an additional check myself this morning. It is very important that people have confidence in the system. If there is a lack of confidence, there is no point in the State rolling out large sums of money on vaccination against HPV if on the other side there is a problem with the physical check in this case. From a financial point of view, which is the remit of this committee, it is questionable to have the State rolling out vaccination but then testing not being adequate or not showing up disease. In this case the lady is terminally ill and no amount of money will undo the situation for her and her family and for the many other women this morning who are stressed out about this.