Kate O'Connell (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

In light of all that has been discussed, I want to make sure that I have not got this wrong. We do not know how many people have hepatitis or how many more new cases there are, so we do not know if we are running at a standstill. There is no database but there are data-sharing issues which the witnesses hope to have dealt with by the first quarter of 2019. As one of my colleagues said, this has been going on since 2004. It appears as if nothing happened until 2017. I refer to the Eastern Health Board report that was never published. I understand that it fed into the national strategy. I found a graph somewhere last night which I cannot find now. The highest number of cases was in the eastern region under the old health board. Those data would still be useful.

The strategy from 2011 to 2014 is out of date because it is from before the drug came into use. I do not see why it cannot be updated. There are no annual targets. A comment was made about accountancy and clinicians but it all comes down to money at the end of the day and when the money runs out. A clinical decision was made in the frame of accountancy when everything stopped in mid-2017. The two go hand-in-hand. I welcome the move to community care. It is in line with Sláintecare but there is not much connection there apart from it being a good idea.

No guidelines were published until 2017, when the pilots started. There was another issue in the report, and I am not sure if someone brought it up when I was outside, which is the treatment centres did not notify the national treatment registry in 2017. What was that breakdown in communication? The drugs cost so much. If the doctors prescribing them are, for whatever reason, whether it is paperwork or because they do not have to, not notifying that they have started person X on it, it does not seem possible to audit outcomes if the centres were not telling us how many people started on the drugs. I am concerned at this entire process. While I concede that moves have been made in the past year - and we have hopes for early 2019 - I would be concerned if this sort of approach was taken to CervicalCheck in the future.