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

Lorraine Walsh told the committee yesterday that she wants to stop looking back and instead look forward and she wants us to work together. This has been a testing time for many of us on the committee. Our job is to interrogate what went wrong. I know it has been difficult for many of the witnesses and many staff working in the system. I ask them, however, to understand where we are coming from. It is very difficult to explain to the public that the test being provided to women was only 70% accurate. Some women do not think about having a smear test but most do not look forward to it. It is something they do because they have bought into the system. It was very difficult to meet women or families who had lost people. In the information vacuum we had in the immediate aftermath of this crisis, the medical people at the top of the Department - I have the height of respect for Dr. Holohan and Dr. McKenna - should have taken hold of the reins. There are lessons for all of us in this. I am not saying I am blameless either but there should have been better leadership at the top, especially when so much was at stake. We had the roll-out of a large population-based screening programme involving an invasive test for a cancer that is personal to people and has affected many families. It was such a basket case of a situation 18 months ago. I genuinely believe the position has improved, although we could not possibly have gone any further backwards, and we will learn from this experience.

Stephen Teap spoke at our meeting yesterday about the lack of organisation and leadership. The medical person, Dr. Gráinne Flannelly, who has arguably saved more lives than anyone in this room, was the first person to get the chop. Lessons have to be applied from what we have learned today. If I have the privilege of being a Member of these Houses in the next term, I will be disappointed if we ever again come across such a lack of organisation or top-down accountability in the HSE or the Department. It is regrettable for population health that we have ended up where we are today. It is testament to the work of all the witnesses, the laboratories and the patient advocates that we can, as a result of the report from RCOG, say that despite all that has happened, the screening programme has not been pointless or a waste of time and money because women have lived who would ordinarily have died and women have had better outcomes than they would have had if there had not been a screening programme. I thank all the witnesses for their time.