Alan Kelly (Tipperary, Labour) | Oireachtas source

Several colleagues have mentioned the quality assurance statistics. I was very taken by Vicky Phelan's evidence yesterday when she said that it was very obvious that she had cancer. I am not criticising anyone in particular but we are dealing with an awful lot of statistics here. In some of these cases, there seems to have been catastrophic human error, particularly where one is going from P2 up to P9. These are the letters that the women get. On the left, the result of the previous smear, which is P2. On the right hand side, the most recent result, which is P9. That is not something gradual; that is a catastrophic human error. I am almost certain of that, although I am not in any way qualified. The worrying aspect is that it would appear that there are quite a number of such cases. Somebody was not doing his or her job and perhaps Mr. Coffey can address that point. We must identify what went on here, where it happened and who messed up. It is quite obvious that not alone was there a mess up in communicating with women regarding their smears, there was also a mess up in terms of cases going from P2 to P9, P3a to P9, P2 to P8a and P2 to P6. That pretty much says it all, does it not?