Ms Tracey Conroy:

While I am reluctant to talk about individual patients in this forum, the Deputy may have missed some of the previous interaction, so at the risk of repeating it, this patient got in contact with the Department in early April regarding the delay in her smear test results. It was not unusual to receive that kind of letter at that time, given the delays in smear test results. The context for saying that is that, of course, the Department and HSE were at the time and continue to be intensively engaged in addressing the capacity issues. We have had some considerable success in that regard, as the HSE has outlined today.

Ms O'Callaghan outlined the series of communications with this patient that took place over the period of time concerned. When it became apparent to the Department that the turnaround in her case was moving beyond what had been expected in that context, we then got in contact with her regarding getting her personal details so that we could ask CervicalCheck to follow up on it. There was intensive engagement between the Department and CervicalCheck on this particular case leading up to the receipt of the report on the matter on 10 July.

On the broader question of how many representations we receive, we receive about 4,000 representations in the Department every year. I do not have the specific figure in respect of CervicalCheck, but we can come back to the committee on that.