Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I will come back to the matter of thalidomide when the Chairman indicates I have five minutes left.

I have a question for Mr. McCallion on the audit. I have followed up on this because it is so important. The view was that we were misinterpreting what the audit was about and that its purpose was to enable the system to learn. It was not really for the women, although women would ultimately benefit from a better system. That was part of the reason officials from the National Cancer Screening Service told us that communicating with the women was not their uppermost priority. The idea was that the audit was an internal learning process. Am I correct in saying that?

Now that the audit process has stopped, I wonder how the system is learning. I have asked numerous questions and, in fairness to the Minister, he has been straight in stating the Scally report and review processes are ongoing. How is the National Cancer Screening Service learning now? It seems to me that there was not much to learn in a sense. The service was not applying the open disclosure policy and did not treat women as being a fundamental part of the treatment by the service. These are basic things. One realises that very quickly and changes one's approach. Why does the National Cancer Screening Service need to wait so long to reintroduce the audit that is such an essential educational tool?