Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank everyone for their patience. I appreciate this is a very long morning for the witnesses. To return to the issue of communication with Sharon, she raised a very serious issue, which we have all now accepted. Some did not accept that initially, but it turned out to be an incredibly serious issue. She was fobbed off with a standard response. I am certain she was not the only person who raised the issue with the Department. As witnesses have said, there was a huge volume of correspondence from women who were very concerned about issues relating to their health, so concerned that they felt it necessary to escalate that. In the normal course of things, people get a smear test done and wait for the results. It is not unusual to wait, and generally people do not panic when they do not hear anything because they believe they will be contacted if something is wrong. We now know that clearly that was not the case.

A large number of women raised concerns. Did they all receive within a couple of weeks the same fob-off letter explaining the delay to them? In reference to what the Chairman said, it does seem that only when the threat of going to the media raised its head was any sort of meaningful response given. I am perfectly willing to accept that was not the case if the witnesses can demonstrate that to be so.

A number of women raised concerns, and so concerned were they that they raised their concerns to the level of the Minister for Health. It appears they were being fobbed off, with the people concerned thinking it was just another letter from another woman who was just concerned because she probably read something in the newspapers or something, and they were just given a letter to explain what would happen in a generic delay-type situation. Clearly, this was not a generic delay-type situation.

Do the witnesses have any idea how many women contacted the Department directly about this particular issue? I hesitate to call it an IT glitch because that is very disrespectful to those on the business end of what was a complete mess. Nobody checked if these women had legitimate concerns or if they were just part of the overall mess, for want of a better word, or part of the overall delay. How many communications were there before a meaningful response was given? The witnesses know what I mean by a meaningful response - not the one that explains what a delay is, because the woman was clearly living that at that time. How many other women with a similar experience were in contact with the Department before they were listened to, taken seriously and any action taken?