Mr. Jim Breslin:

I am not involved in the decision-making process, but I will offer the Deputy a view. I do not believe an audit has ever worked in real time, if I may use that expression. When it kicked off in 2013 or 2014, it went all the way back to 2008. The Deputy is right - a range of women were informed some significant time after they had been treated for cervical cancer that this was what was known about their previous smear test history. Having got it up to date, there would still have been a time lag in the audit. It is not that someone would be diagnosed today and told within a couple of weeks that we had looked at her smear test and that here was the result. Dr. McKenna reflected that, rather than carrying out an audit that could be criticised and seen as inadequate, including by Dr. Scally who might say there was a problem with it, there would be a pause period of a couple of months. The relevant individuals would be new diagnoses during that period. They would be caught up with as soon as the audit recommenced with a clean bill of health.

Those results would be communicated in line with the best practice that would be applied from there on. The Deputy is correct, but it only stands up to scrutiny if the pause period is limited and a backlog does not build up.