Dr. Gabriel Scally:

If we did not have such a process, the Deputy would not be far off the mark. There was no QA visit from 2014, though I do not know if that is worse than having a QA visit and then not following up on its findings. In the context of the internal workings of CervicalCheck, the QA committee met regularly and had an external chair but the committee was almost blindsided by the review, which came to be known as an audit in later days. There were seven iterations of the protocol for conducting the review and none of them was particularly satisfactory. They were never reviewed by the QA committee so not only was there an external deficiency in QA in terms of the laboratory service providers, there was a deficiency in the functioning of QA within CervicalCheck.

There was but one meeting of the medical advisory committee in ten years. No cytopathologist was employed in the programme but cytopathology is the base science for this. There were serious deficiencies in staffing at all levels. Dr. Denton may wish to speak about the 221 women and the look-back issues.