Ms Mary McLaughlin:

The cost would have been affordable for the State in 2018 when I first wrote to the State. I had contacted Dr. Veronikis to say that I had a group of women who are not getting any services. I asked him if I were to contact the Government and were it to bring him to Ireland whether he would come on a wait list initiative. Dr. Veronikis said, at that time, that he would come for six weeks and operate six days per week. He does this procedure every day. He does not need to come to Ireland. He could sit in St. Louis and do his work. Dr. Veronikis thought it was a worthy project. I wrote a letter to say there was this doctor to whom I would like to connect those concerned if they would like to speak to the doctor. There was no substantive response. I then took that campaign to Scotland. This doctor interacted with the Scottish Government. Basically, the problem was that there was not a single medical professional who would fill out the paperwork to bring this esteemed surgeon in. As a background to it, there is a lot of litigation going on and the women do not have any records. Our records do not state that we are mesh injured. That is a background story as to why the medical community may be averse to bringing in an independent expert. In the time we have sat here, at least one woman could have had her mesh removed.