Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

Yes. I have had contact, as I am sure have other members, with people following the meeting last week about other strands of liability. A broad range of issues make up that liability and we almost have to decouple them from where the liability lies if we are to get to an approach that involves a different system. Despite what the State Claims Agency says, one has to go legal. What we heard about the way claims occur nearly always has to be legal. It is not about mediation in the way we understand mediation. If a couple are getting divorced, the two parties sit in different rooms with another person to try to work things out, and they never end up anywhere near the court. That is now how it is in this case; one almost has to make a statement of claim. We will never get beyond that to a different system unless the system itself is challenged. That is not to say that the State Claims Agency should not robustly go through claims. Obviously, people will make claims that are overstated and so on but I do not believe we have got to the point where we are looking at the process in the kind of detail necessary to address that.

On the second issue, CervicalCheck, we were spun a yarn last week about the length of time it is taking to release the slides. I continue to have conversations with seven families and a solicitor on the practical side of things. I restate that people are waiting for slides from April, May and June, which are not being released. We were told that the average waiting time was 22 weeks but that is a fib, and we should not accept that from the HSE.