Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I agree there is more to be done on this. It is worth noting the HSE's response last week. I put its clarifying statement to it and stated that while it was regretting that there was confusion caused, it clearly instructed hospitals not to treat particular people, there is no confusion about that and it made a mistake, and asked would its representatives admit that they have made a mistake and let us move on. I am open to being corrected but I am fairly sure they did not say, "Yes, we made a mistake." They danced around it being an awful situation that such confusion was caused. I reflected on it afterwards and concluded it is more serious than the usual hedging one gets, because this is about CervicalCheck, which came to light because of non-disclosure and because of people not putting their hands up and saying that they got something wrong. We are all fallible and people get things wrong. Within a functioning healthcare system, our officials and clinicians must be able to put their hands up and say that they made a call, be it a management call or a clinical call, and it was the wrong call. That must be acceptable within the system.

If those running the system - last week we had the Minister, the Secretary General and the head of the HSE before us - refuse to say that they got that wrong, it should not have happened and it will not happen again, that sends a message to every healthcare professional, official and manager working within the system that says it is business as usual; hedge, fudge, obfuscate and never accept that one has done anything wrong. It is regrettable.

I will ask a question for consideration at the committee.

I agree that we should find out the scale of this issue regarding CervicalCheck. However, it opens up the broader question of where else in the system this is happening. Women were waiting up to nine months for smear test results from CervicalCheck but people are also waiting between three months and two years for access to an MRI, a CAT scan, or various other diagnostics. Inevitably, people are being advised by their GPs that, as they will be waiting years for diagnostics on the public system, they should get them done privately. The GP can then look at the results and refer them to a consultant in the public system if there is something there. Patients feel compelled to get such tests done privately because of the huge waiting lists for public diagnostics. Is it HSE policy that such patients will not be seen across the public system? If a person has a diagnostic result that shows he or she needs specialist medical care, will the HSE do what it did to Ms Claire Healy? The HSE knew her results indicated that she needed specialist care, but it would not allow her access to the public system. She was told to get back in the queue and that she would be put on a list once she had gotten the same results in a year and a half from a public MRI machine. The committee should ask the HSE where else this practice is going on. The waiting times for diagnostics across the system are not normal.