Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

People come to my office and ask me whether I have faith in the programme. I respond by telling them that I am 100% sure that screening saves lives, that I have seen it with my own eyes and know that it save lives. Given that we are here discussing this matter and there has been an awful lot of attention on the screening programme the HSE is only now moving to acquire accreditation. The HSE has no control over the laboratories in the US and cannot compel them to comply with standards. The mechanism that one would use to compel someone to apply a certain standard is to say, "Well, I will withhold a contract until you demonstrate compliance." Clearly, the HSE has not bothered to do that so that has not happened. The laboratories are still getting money for providing the service but nobody quite knows. The witnesses might be right that the CAP accreditation is the same as the ISO accreditation but that is not what is written in the contract.