Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I do not know if he should have accepted that. We now have people going to the High Court or the judicial process seeking access to the slides. They may not be able to delve into the matters I mentioned, including conditions and standards, but we know the outsourcing was to substandard laboratories that were not ISO-accredited, with 100 slides done per worker per day as opposed to 60 slides per worker per day done in Irish labs. This is the substandard nature of what has gone on.

I understand the witness saying we should stop looking back in anger and move forward with a proper process but if we do not look back, history will be repeated. Outsourcing to private and for-profit services, whether it is for fertility issues or CervicalCheck, will bring such issues. Fertility treatment probably will not kill a person but not having the correct analysis of a cervical smear test may do so.

What do we say to women who fall outside the audit being closed? Where do they stand in all this? I have a friend who is terminally ill and she had four clear smear test results in a row, having been tested on an annual basis. All of a sudden she has stage four cancer. She had to go private to get the audit done, and as has been mentioned it cost approximately €4,000 plus solicitor fees. Only yesterday she was informed definitively that there was a serious misreading of her slides, as there were plentiful dodgy cells. It is a clear case of negligence that still must be proved. What do we say to people like her? She is a working class woman whose community had to fundraise in order to get the audit done. Could we not do something while they are still around to show we care and are looking after their interests?