Alan Kelly (Tipperary, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I will try my best.

I thank our guests for their opening statements. I have a lot to get through. I want to say to our guests from RCOG, the Department of Health and the HSE that we have a serious issue when the lady who commenced all of this, Vicky Phelan, says she has no confidence in this report. The two patient advocates who were before the committee last night also said they have no confidence in this report. That is their opinion and they aired it intensely and publicly and that is before all of the information that they have has been made public. Those people cannot put some of that information out into the public forum because there are individual cases involved etc., but that is deeply worrying.

The testimony of Lorraine Walsh yesterday was also deeply worrying. I will not get into it, but I would like the representatives of the Department of Health to reflect on what she said before the committee. I want to get the best for everyone out of this and am, and will continue to be, as big an advocate as anyone for improving our screening programme. The harrowing testimony we heard yesterday was upsetting. It is something I will reflect on, in whatever role I have, in the future.

Professor Kitchener referred to unfounded criticism in his opening statement and I thought that an unfortunate choice of phrase because the criticism that has been forthcoming, particularly from Ms Walsh, has been fully documented and sent to us. While Professor Kitchener may not believe that there are overt issues, there is certainly validity in, and direct evidence of, some of those criticisms. I have correspondence from Professor Kitchener in which he apologised for failings.

We only received Dr. Holohan's opening statement this morning. That is a tactic used by a number of individuals - not necessarily Dr. Holohan - of which I am getting tired. I was taken by the fact that Dr. Holohan's statement did not reflect that, although progress has been made and I have no doubt about that, we have also had major issues. I ask our guests to read the statement of Stephen Teap yesterday because, in about three paragraphs, he summed up all the issues. The Taoiseach has apologised on behalf of the people of Ireland for what happened.

Even Dr. Scally's recommendations have not all been implemented. It is not all rosy in the garden. Dr. Holohan's opening statement did not proportionately reflect that we still have a range of issues, which is of concern.

These are the terms of reference for RCOG. Terms of reference are very important. We are here to discuss RCOG. These were individual reports for all the women. We have had the first and second Scally reports. We know what we need to do and we know the recommendations. We needed an aggregated report statistically from RCOG, as is listed here - nothing more and nothing less. Some people have jumped to take certain findings out of that which were not part of this and I am not sure are helpful.

Professor Kitchener said today that some people have an issue with the credibility of the reporting. Let me say this straight: I agree with many people. I have no issue with RCOG's clinical analysis. My issues relate to the reporting and statistical management - how all those data have been managed. I also have an issue with the process by which data have been shared, the reporting mechanism and whether the crosschecking of databases has been accurate. Professor Kitchener said that among all these women there have been fewer than five supplementary reports and two cases where the conclusion has been updated.

Let us start at the beginning. On 21 November, Professor Kitchener said:

Following last Friday's alert regarding a partial report [I will get back to the phrase "partial report" in a while] we conducted an investigation to ensure all of the results had been uploaded on our database. I am writing to confirm there was no other valid slide result from batch 35 or indeed any other batch that has not been uploaded on to our database.

Therefore, there was one issue on 21 November. Following on from that Damien McCallion, who was complimented extensively by those who appeared yesterday evening, as was the HSE - I want to acknowledge that, wrote to Lorraine Walsh on 3 December and stated:

I want to make you aware that I know that RCOG have confirmed that no other women were affected by the issue which affected your initial report last Friday, which you have spoken about quite publicly and that that came in yesterday.

Therefore, we have confirmation again on 3 December.

Lorraine Walsh appeared on "Prime Time" on 3 December and an unsolicited email came into the programme. The unsolicited email was from Emma Gilgunn-Jones who is director of media and public relations for RCOG. It stated:

In order to ensure the correct letter was sent to the correct patient using the standard format ... For three women, supplementary reports were issued because new information came to light. In only one of these cases was the conclusion updated.

Therefore, we have now gone from one to three where only one case was updated. Today we have five supplementary reports and two cases where it was updated. The pattern is increasing all the time. Statistically I know the number of women involved. However, why was this information not available initially? Why has this been updated again today? It is a cause of concern.