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

I get that Professor Flannelly is not here, but the Minister is also not here.

Another comment made earlier was that the clinical advice was not taken by the Minister and that this would harm women's health and undermine the screening programme. That is a fair charge coming out of this committee this morning because the sole focus here is getting this sorted for the future. We must move forward from where we are, where many of us are concerned about whether the entire system will collapse. The backlog issue is not great. As I pointed out in my initial contribution, we do not seem to be getting traction on the capacity issue. I am aware that other members have asked about this and I acknowledge that it is difficult to get timelines as to when we can eat into that backlog.

That is a major concern for us because, again, there have been a couple of comments that it could take ten years or so to get through this. If the progression of cervical cancer is three, six, and nine years that is then sending a message out of this committee that is incorrect, which will feed the scaremongering and the anxiety related to this issue.

Other contributions have been made about the Oireachtas having contributed to this issue. I believe the vast majority of Members were trying to get answers to try and improve the system.

As we move forward from today, the day of political point-scoring, and the historical look back at who did what and when, could leave us forever looking into this but to what end? At the end of the day, the point of this is to save lives, to ensure better outcomes for women and families, and to examine at the exposure of the open disclosure issue, which many obstetricians and gynaecologists here have dealt with in the past.

How do we eat into this backlog and hammer home the message that screening saves lives, improves outcomes in respect of fertility and improves people's life experiences; the healthy population is screened; women with symptoms move to a different phase and those at a higher risk move to a different area.? I do not want the message going out from this committee that there are 80,000 people who are likely to have cervical cancer sitting in a room. I understand, with reference to Dr. Henry, that this is not the truth. We do not want additional erosion of our screening and our engagement.