Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú) | Oireachtas source

As someone who has had a battle with cancer this year, I thank all of the witnesses very much for the work they do in their professional capacities. It is appreciated. Before I ask my questions, I will add my voice to urge and encourage women to use the CervicalCheck cancer screening. Despite all the media reports and questions around it, the programme plays a valuable role in protecting women's lives.

I recently received a reply to a parliamentary question which showed that 231 legal cases related to CervicalCheck have been launched in recent times. That is shocking in many ways. The Tánaiste told us that women would not have to go through the court system to achieve justice in this regard and we have been long promised a tribunal to deal with this matter but it is still not in place. The Government stated that women had been wronged and rightly apologised for that. The courts have also stated that women had been wronged. A long list of doctors have stated that certain slides were misread. There were flashing red lights that should have been seen when those slides were read in the first instance, but that did not happen. While I agree with the clinical director of CervicalCheck that there is always a significant margin of error in screening and that is part of the process, there is a Government policy and a court decision that notes that there have also been difficulties outside of that margin of error, as such.

I received a letter from CervicalCheck in the past couple of weeks and had a conversation with its clinical director. I was taken by surprise that CervicalCheck seems to have a different view on this from the Government and the courts and it does not believe that women have been wronged and that the courts have adjudicated correctly. I am worried about that because it has an effect on the women who have gone through the system and received an apology. I am also concerned about other problems that we may find within society. There may be other women, outside the normal margin of error, who had their slides misread and are currently asymptomatic. If we carried out a sample reading look-back on those slides, we might be able to ensure that lives are protected and people get diagnoses and receive treatment faster. The reason I came to this view was as a result of the very sad case of Ms Patricia Carrick, God rest her. She did not have cancer at the time of a look-back so her case was not read. I will perhaps ask the clinical director of CervicalCheck if there is not a danger here if different elements of the State have radically different opinions on the matter. Does that difference of opinion not make it difficult for us then to ensure that we proceed with a look-back on other samples?