Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Yes, it is. The figure was €320 million in 2018.

We have introduced periodic payments through the Department of Justice and Equality. When people go to court, they often do not want to receive a massive lump sum, but they need to know that they will be able to care in an orderly manner for themselves or their loved ones affected by an adverse incident.

The third element is a big body of work, on which the Department of Justice and Equality is leading, but we are contributing to it. An expert group chaired by Mr. Justice Charles Meenan will examine the reform of tort law in this area in general and the reasons medical negligence cases need to be so adversarial to see if there are better ways to deal with cases. We have seen an element of this in the piece of work done on CervicalCheck and the tribunal legislation we will bring forward, but there is a broader piece of work to be done. I do not disagree with the point made by the Deputy.

On how we can reassure women that lessons have been learned from what went wrong in non-disclosure following an audit in CervicalCheck, I think the Deputy made the point which I will reiterate. Obviously, screening is not a diagnostic tool; there are always false positives and false negatives in any screening service. At the very heart of this debacle there is the issue of non-disclosure. Disclosure was meant to happen. It is not a question of whether disclosure is good or bad. It was agreed that disclosure would happen, but clearly something then went very wrong. I say to the women of Ireland and their families that we have key recommendations in the Scally report that will fulfil what I believe was Vicki Phelan's ambition when she first spoke to me to say she wanted some good to come out of this. We will eradicate cervical cancer within a generation and I am determined that we will do so, as is my Department. Doctors are determined that we will do so and we will do it through vaccination and a really robust screening programme. We can eradicate this awful disease. The Scally report is so detailed in its recommendations and people are working very hard on them. I asked Dr. Scally to stay to oversee progress and he has just produced his first progress report in which he note very good progress has been made. Encouragingly, he has praised the Department of Health and the HSE for the seriousness with which they have taken the recommendations made in his report.