Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail)
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I take exception with the Minister saying it is correct now. Of course the Minister believed it was the right decision at the time. He made the decision and that is fine. I find it extraordinary that he would state that it is correct now. There are 80,000 women around the country waiting for eight or nine months, with hundreds of thousands waiting for the HPV test, which he said would be in place last September but which we are now told may not even be this calendar year. The Minister's decision is directly linked to that. We also had evidence last week that there was no medical benefit. It was about reassuring people. It is extraordinary that knowing everything we know, with the evidence to the committee that the Minister was repeatedly asked to stop because it was causing these delays and fundamentally undermining the system, that he would still say it was the right decision today.