Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein)
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I thank the witnesses. I do not mean to be disrespectful to the Minister of State, Deputy Jim Daly. I thank him for coming before the committee. It is regrettable that the Minister is not present. It is a long time since we have had a quarterly meeting and we are hoping to be able to rectify that. I fully understand the reason that he is not here this morning, but it is regrettable.

The Taoiseach recently made a statement on annual leave in the hospital service and the difficulties he alleges it creates particularly around Christmas time. This statement was grossly offensive to men and women, many of whom will work hard right over the Christmas period. I wonder where that assertion came from. Does Mr. Connaghan know of a particular problem in January? How is it accounted for and will he shed some light as to why the Taoiseach said that? I heard a radio DJ say that he went into a hospital at Christmas and he formed the opinion that there was not much going on. I do not think that is the truth. I think a lot goes on over Christmas but perhaps Mr. Connaghan can enlighten us on that.

With regard to recruitment and retention, it is my understanding that we now have 259 fewer staff nurses than we had in December 2017. I have spoken to nurses and they are telling me that the manner in which the recruitment is taking place is acting as an effective moratorium because it takes so long from the decision to recruit to actually finding oneself in employment on the wards. Is that being analysed? Is anyone looking at that and can we get an estimation of where they think the blockages are and how they are manifesting themselves and if there are any plans to tackle them will the witnesses share those plans with us?

If the allocation of €10 million for the winter plan is not spent by the end of the year is it rolled over into next year? I know it is additional funding but I wonder how it works. Winter will not be confined to 2018 and it will continue into 2019, is there a plan? We know that the NHS publishes its winter initiative in September, but we have not seen the winter initiative. I note what Mr. Connaghan has said but he is listing services that should be happening anyway. The idea that this is an extraordinary intervention because of winter is a bit much. What is on the list is the normal day to day activity that should be really happening in our health service. It would be extraordinary that it does not happen every day of the week. Will he comment on whether the money will be spent in 2019, and on the funded workforce plan? Mr. Mulvany and I have spoken about that previously. As I understand it, there is no funded workforce plan and the matter was referred to a third party for negotiations; will he share with us what stage it is at?

I have more questions, which I will save until afterward, but my final question in this round relates to CervicalCheck. We were all touched and saddened to read about the case of Ms Julie O'Reilly in The Irish Timesat the weekend. She was tested four times and the diagnosis was not given to her each time. There were pre-cancerous cells present but four times they were missed. I know that Cian O'Carroll has written in the newspaper that there still has not been an on-site audit of the testing laboratories in the US. Perhaps the witnesses can comment on that and give us an update as to whether all of the laboratories - I am referring to the laboratories in Honolulu from which initially the referral was made to Texas and there was a further outsourcing of the outsourcing. I do not want to get into a debate on outsourcing because everybody knows my views on that. Has there been any on-site testing of every laboratory to which the samples were sent for testing? Has there been any on-site testing because from my read of what was reported in the newspaper there has been no on-site testing of the laboratories where the tests were analysed? Will the witness confirm whether there has been on-site testing of laboratories engaged in the analysis of test, and share the results with members? During the course of one committee hearing we asked officials if they could give us a breakdown of the results between each laboratory, including the outsourced and re-outsourced and we were told months ago that it would be no bother to get the information to the committee, but we still have not got it. It appears every time we ask a question and it becomes more and more complex.