John Brassil (Kerry, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to contribute briefly. My first comment is that I think we should never miss the opportunity to get some benefit from this crisis. There is an opportunity here, because what has become apparent and blatant in the last few days is that the culture of non-disclosure and covering up is never acceptable and is never the right option. I think that message has to go very clearly to all employees in the HSE. If something goes wrong, they should put their hands up. The outcome of that will always be better than pretending that it did not happen. In future, if every arm of that organisation operates on that basis, issues such as this, while they will always be difficult, will always be dealt with in a far more progressive manner.

I have just a couple of specific questions. There is talk of a new, more accurate human papillomavirus, HPV-based screening technique. When will that be available instead of what is there at the moment? I am just wondering whether, if there is a more accurate and better test, it would be better to concentrate on that rather than continuing what we have, which has a degree of uncertainty about it. With regard to patients who have had previous high-risk or non-clear tests, is there a targeted campaign to contact those women to say they should be tested again or are we leaving it up the women themselves to come back and say that they want to be re-tested? My opinion is that we should target them as opposed to waiting for them to come to us, because people's nature is to hope that there is no problem, to turn a blind eye and hope it goes away.

There is an onus on us to contact any potentially high risk patient and to ask her to come back in for another look.

Last night I raised the issue of the succession of the CEO of the HSE. In his contribution just five minutes ago, Mr. Tony O'Brien said that he doubted there would be much interest or uptake by anybody because of the nature of the organisation and the difficulties around the role. It would, however, be nice to know a month or two before the current director general leaves if there is interest in the job. If there was no interest then what could be done to attract people and what head hunting would be required? By the time we find somebody and by the time he or she gives notice, we are certainly looking at a six-month period. There is a lesson to be learned in that. This applies not only to the recruitment of CEO positions but across all positions in the HSE. There should be a much better succession planning system in place when trying to replace administrators, doctors, consultants and nurses. That clearly is not there. There is a lesson to be learned in trying to improve this process.