Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail)
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The reality is that expert clinical advice was given. Expert clinical advice was ignored.

Regardless of what happened during that weekend, because it was a very busy one, the reality is that once the delays, as predicted by CervicalCheck, began to mount through the year, the Minister was contacted by the laboratories, CervicalCheck, oncologists and a variety of people asking him to stop the test. The Minister continued with the test through the year, and today we have 80,000 women waiting, an indefinite delay to the introduction of the HPV test, and we need to provision for that, which is what this meeting is about. Given that the Minister says he accepts responsibility for his decision-----