Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 10 October 2018

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health

Scoping Inquiry into the CervicalCheck Screening Programme: Discussion

9:00 am

Dr. Gabriel Scally:

We do know that, despite their not having ISO accreditation, they were given the contracts, even though it was stated plainly in the call for tenders that ISO accreditation was a requirement. There is disputation about the degree to which CervicalCheck agreed that it was equivalent. That is one of the issues we are digging into to get an answer. As well as that, we are going to look at how equivalent are the two accreditations. We will make a much more detailed comparison of the two. Dr. Denton and other colleagues visited all of the current providers, as well the College of American Pathologists, to conduct their own detailed look at the quality of the services offered. It was on that basis that we were able to say we could not see any reason the current contracts could not be rolled forward, not on the basis of the accreditation standard, although they met all of the standards required in the United states.