Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

Okay. I will park that. Deputy O'Connell also referred to her colleague, Senator Reilly, who advocated for the introduction of a national screening programme. At the time, he stated:

I understand several laboratories are now accredited, including Beaumont/Rotunda, RCSI, St. James's Hospital through its connection with Antrim and Altnagelvin Hospital, which has looked after the needs of Donegal, Sligo and Leitrim. St. Luke's is also mid-way through the process.

Having pointed out all that, he said: "This call for action obviously fell on deaf ears". He continues to say that instead of addressing this issue and ensuring that our laboratories would be in a position to tender for and successfully provide cytology, there was a rushed and ill-considered decision that has serious consequences for our health service and for the health of our women and further begs the question as to why we sought out partners in the USA. At the time, the unions, professionals, academics and many politicians advocated against the outsourcing of our health service to the USA. Why do all the bodies here think this is not an issue, when they have settlements for several millions in several high-profile cases from laboratories in the USA? Are the bodies here happy with the way those laboratories were run when we knew they were not ISO-accredited, they were processing 100 slides per day compared with an average of 30 to 60 in Irish laboratories, that the standards were lower and all the evidence from Dr. Scally? Why is there not something to look at? The NHS has a document in which it advises on the guidance of applying duty of candour and disclosure for audit results. It states "sometimes it can be hard for screening services to know how to distinguish between a false negative/false positive that has occurred because of the limitations of screening and a false negative/false positive that has occurred because something has gone wrong". I note "something has gone wrong" is written in italics. Something went wrong in the cases of the women with whom the laboratories settled for millions. More cases are coming up. Cases have fallen outside the audit and outside the RCOG report that are now coming to light too. That will go to court and cannot go through this non-adversarial process. Nobody has actually looked at what went wrong. This is a problem and it is very disappointing that RCOG was not able to look at it either. Something has to have gone wrong when one hears evidence that states that Dr. Scally told us that he could not look at the particulars in Lorraine Walsh's case because the laboratory told him it did not have the records.

An answer to a parliamentary question about the missing slides stated that more than 1,700 slides were transferred for the RCOG report. The HSE reported that during the process, a total of 35 slides of women or their next of kin who had consented were not located by the laboratories at the closing date for the slides to be transferred on 7 June. Does that inspire confidence? I am not trying to undermine the process, the screening or the need for it, but does that inspire confidence in laboratories that tell Dr. Scally that they cannot investigate the particulars of very serious and high-profile cases because the evidence is missing and that somehow cannot find 35 slides that should have been part of the RCOG report? As it happens, many of those 35 slides had serious misreadings. My final question to RCOG is, if it had those slides and they had serious misreadings, would that change the outcome of its judgment that what happened here in Ireland is broadly in line with the audit of what happened in Britain? I do not believe it reflects it. I think it would change it and the headline here is that we are broadly in line, in our audit, with what happened under the NHS.