Mr. Cian O'Carroll:

The statistics have been dripping through. It started with the interview given by Gráinne Flannelly, then clinical director of CervicalCheck, on "Morning Ireland" on 25 or 26 April. We first got a sense of statistics then, when she explained that there were 1,462 cases that had been looked at. Of those, a cohort selection of 460-odd cases had been sent for review. Of that, there were 209 cases - it was about 206 then, but the number has since grown - which involved an error in the reporting, which resulted in a clinically significant delay in the commencement of treatment for the cancer. That is the crucial bit. We then found out that there were another 1,500 on the national cancer register, and that brought the total figure of women who had been diagnosed with cervical cancer over the ten-year life of CervicalCheck to date to 3,000.

However, the documents that were released last night from the Department of Health include some of the annual reviews and audits which were happening around the CervicalCheck programme. In the review, the statistics for 2016 show that at that stage they had only audited about 400 cases. The current figure is somewhere around 462. That is the figure that Gráinne Flannelly gave. It explains why not everybody is being audited in this report. It shows that the service categorised cases by the timing within the history of the cancer. They categorised the timing into six different categories. For example, among women who had a diagnosis following a previous colposcopy, only most of the cases were reviewed and looked back at. None of the cases where there was no screening for the woman prior to diagnosis of cancer were reviewed or looked back on.