Kate O'Connell (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

It is worth noting as well the ethical challenges she faced at the time and the different space we were in as a country. There was a lot of resistance to funding for this area, and there was a lot of hearsay and all sorts of carry-on that was very hard to battle. I know that Senator James Reilly was instrumental in bringing the truth of the situation to the fore as well. To go back to today's job, I have been meeting all the witnesses at the Committee of Public Accounts and this committee for a while now and for 18 months with regard to this matter.

The words "blame" and "truth" have come up a lot. I would level the blame for this on the audit and, in particular, whoever it was who decided that it was a good idea to audit without considering the impact of the audit results. Something that was imprecise, with a 70% detection rate, was being audited so naturally the results would not be easy to read if someone fell into the other 30% all the time and had cancer. The main lesson that needs to be learned is that in the context of everything that is done by the Department and the HSE, the patient must be to the fore. The impact all the way down to the person whose slide is involved must be considered.

Another lesson from what happened involves the lack of leadership and governance. It was very clear to me and to other members of the committees that no one seemed to be in charge. There was a vacuum and this left space for falsehoods or for incomplete information to get out. A lie is halfway around the world before the truth is putting its boots on. That is really what happened in this case to some extent. I am grateful for the report and I believe in its independence. However, it is very difficult to explain to people that despite the questionable quality assurance that was in play when we were going over to see the labs, despite not noticing that slides were being sent to other labs in clear breach of contract, despite the guy in Salford operating without approval and despite all the things we discovered, it appears that our gross population data, as per the report, is not too different from that of the UK. I believe that but it is very difficult to communicate it to the public and to say that, despite all that has happened over the past 18 months, "Nothing to worry about girls, it has all been fine." That is a very hard message to get across to people and they do question it.

In terms of the labelling of slides, I can understand the complexities involved. I would like to clarify something which emerged yesterday and about which I am unhappy. Where there was a slide that was concordant with the result, it was categorised as concordant. Where a slide was discordant with the CervicalCheck result, it was discordant. Dr. Walker spoke about the non-homogenous group, namely, the third group of people. I agree with him, particularly in the context of trying to just force everybody into that group. On the basis of what he stated, they were not a homogenous group and they could have had no smears. I just want to clarify that where there was an assumption or a decision made that a slide was concordant, there was actually a physical slide present.