Kieran O'Donnell (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

No. The HSE, CervicalCheck and the State Claims Agency are saying that they would never take a woman into court. They would not look for a gagging clause. The problem is that it has been subcontracted. I suspect that within the original contract that was signed by the CervicalCheck and the HSE with the American laboratory, they subcontracted the legal responsibility for the smear as well. We now know that the ten cases involved American laboratories. We now have a situation where the women are effectively being told that they are dealing with faceless American laboratories whose employers are the HSE, not the individual women. Based on what has now happened and the fact that there are ten cases, does Mr. Breen believe that settlements will be made out of court? Alternatively, does he believe that they will drag these women into court, or drag their families, three of the women having lost their lives?

The witness mentioned non-disclosure. On reflection, does Mr Breen believe that he is taking a purely legal reading of it rather than looking at it on a moral level? Take the instance of a case of someone like Vicky Phelan. If Vicky Phelan had known in 2014, she may have gone on the drug she is on now. We have to go back to the source. Will Mr. Breen, before he appears before the Joint Committee on Health, look at the contracts that were concluded between the HSE, CervicalCheck and the laboratories themselves?