Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Regarding the Minister's amendment, I am happy with the inclusion of those women. I will outline the purpose of amendment No. 2. The women who will be eligible to participate in the tribunal in the first instance are those in the 221 Plus group. There is a second group comprising the 2,000 or so women who were on the National Cancer Registry as having been diagnosed with cervical cancer but about whose diagnoses CervicalCheck was not told. Those women were offered an audit to be carried out by the RCOG in the UK. Approximately half said "Yes". Under the Bill, those 1,000 women have access to the tribunal, but what about the other 1,000 who said "No"? They said "No" without knowing that, in doing so, they were losing access to the tribunal. We do not know how many would have said "Yes" if they had been told that a tribunal was on the way and that, in order to access it, they would need to participate in the review, but it is reasonable to believe the number to be more than zero. If they had been told that the tribunal would be limited to a certain set of women, and knowing that the RCOG was the recognised independent body whose evidence the tribunal could use, a number of those 1,000 women would inevitably have liked to participate in its review. That is what my amendment seeks to allow.

I take the Minister's point that the RCOG review is independent and the deadline for involvement has passed. Will he and his officials find a way for this other group of women to be offered participation in a view, be it by the RCOG, CervicalCheck or an authority or expert group in France, Germany or wherever? Let us assume that, of the 50% who did not say "Yes", one in five would now do so in light of this new knowledge about the tribunal. Is there another body that could handle a few hundred reviews in a reasonably short time? Obviously, the reviews would, like the RCOG's, need to be of the highest quality and fully independent. Let us ensure that those women are made the offer. Maybe the body would be the French or German equivalent of the RCOG. It could be any international group that is deemed appropriate.

I am happy to move and withdraw my amendment, but does the Minister agree with its principle? Does he accept that the 1,000 women who said "No" should be made the offer if an RCOG-type review for them to undergo can be found? They said "No" not knowing about the tribunal. If he agrees with that principle, will he commit to tasking the Department with trying to find a mechanism to let that happen?