Michael Harty (Clare, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank Mr. Connaghan. The way we will conduct the meeting this morning is we will offer each member of the committee 12 minutes to ask and receive answers to questions and I ask them to observe the time limit, if possible. Those who are not members of the committee will be allocated five minutes to ask questions and have them answered. With this in mind, I will begin.

I have number of questions which I would like Mr. Connaghan to answer. Why was the information on the false negatives identified in the audit not brought to the attention of the secretary general of the HSE and the Minister for Health at the time, in regard to open disclosure? Why was it not escalated up the line? Where is the information regarding the number of false negatives identified from the various laboratories? We requested last week that we would get information on the quality of the reporting of each laboratory, but we still have not received that information. Why was open disclosure posing such a great difficulty in 2016 when it was already HSE policy in 2013? What was the issue that inhibited open disclosure?

I believe it was the responsibility of the CervicalCheck programme to make information available to patients. I do not think it was the responsibility of the treating clinicians. I would like Mr. Connaghan's comments on this because it was the CervicalCheck programme that took the smears, and I believe they were the appropriate people to contact patients and pass the information down the line.

With regard to the documents we received yesterday, in document No. 5 there is a table of cervical cancer cases notified to the National Cancer Registry in Ireland and another table of the cancers identified by CervicalCheck. Up to 2013, some 1,853 cancers were notified to the cancer registry yet the CervicalCheck screening programme had only 808. Did that not trigger alarm bells, that there was a growing disparity between the figures? Perhaps Mr. Connaghan will comment on this.

Was there any withholding of information over the period up to now, from women who specifically asked for information on their previous smears but were denied access to that information? Are there any issues in relation to cytology, other than the false negatives, that have led to delayed diagnosis and delayed treatment in the CervicalCheck programme, in other words, in the process of recall, getting appointments and access to colposcopy? Why is the proposed introduction of HPV testing of smears being delayed until November of this year? Surely that test could be introduced sooner.