Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for the honesty of his assessment that he, his party and many people felt that this was the right decision to make based on what women wanted and needed at the time. I accept that. I also accept fully that the challenge has been the fact of the impact this has had on capacity. Being very truthful - I believe my officials have said this previously, as has the HSE - and it is the absolute truth, it was impossible to estimate how many women would seek this, and there were two reasons for that. First, this was a very personal decision a woman needed to make with her doctor. We saw that 110,000 women went to their doctors under this provision and 57,000 decided to go for a repeat smear test. Second, and I am being very honest, one of the reasons we have found a particular difficulty is that the period went on for longer than I would have liked. That is not a criticism of Dr. Gabriel Scally. He has done an incredible job. Because he was doing such an incredible job, we had hoped as an Oireachtas to get his report in June, but he asked if he could carry on until September. There was a longer period of time before I was able to turn off or pause the decision, so to speak.

In October, I received a submission from my Department indicating we had Dr. Scally's report, that it provided good reassurance for the women of Ireland that the screening service was safe in terms of the laboratories we use, notwithstanding the shortcomings, and that I should communicate to the HSE my intention to end the free repeat smear test, and we did that. I accepted my officials' advice in full. We communicated that to the HSE which operated it, and it said that while the decision was accepted, because smear tests and the likes were booked in, it believed it should operationalise that decision at the end of December. It is important to point out, and I believe the Deputy has acknowledged it, that these were decisions being taken in real time. The worry was real, live and present. Women were going to their doctors wanting to know what they could do. The phone line was up and running, women were ringing the phone line asking if they could have a repeat smear test. GPs were asking how they could tell a patient she had her smear a year ago and that she had to wait another two years. We were putting immediate steps in place to make arrangements with smear takers. The Irish Medical Organisation, IMO, negotiated the fee as a GP representative organisation. The president of the National Association of General Practitioners, NAGP, welcomed it as being the right decision. We did not have the opportunity to do that level of screening. I accept that as a criticism but I cannot see how it could have been done differently considering the crisis we were in.