Mary White (Carlow-Kilkenny, Green Party)

I wish to share time with Deputy Mary O'Rourke.

I am pleased to speak here this morning. I believe the health system is slowly but surely reforming and the great challenges facing it are being addressed over time. The Green Party believes in equitable access to health services and recent achievements by the Government and the careful and co-ordinated approach by Professor Keane and the national cancer control programme, the encouraging signs of consultants accepting the contracts being offered by the Department of Health and Children and this latest development concerning the National Cancer Screening Service proposed contract for cervical cancer screening represent signs of reform and improvements in health care for the people of Ireland, particularly women. Many challenges remain, but everybody in this House must welcome the reform and improvements we are witnessing.

In recent weeks there has much coverage and criticism of the NCSS's announcement of a preferred bidder for the provision of laboratory testing services for the national cervical screening programme. Much of it has centred on concerns over jobs losses of laboratory workers involved in cervical cancer screening. Others have voiced complaints about the tendering process itself. I wish to make several points about the tendering process and the implications of any contract with Quest Diagnostics lest any undue concerns gain further credence here.

First, there is the issue of the procurement process and the speculation about the capacity criterion announced by the NCSS at the time of tendering. The procurement process was open to all laboratories in Ireland and internationally, public and private, in accordance with the usual EU procurement guidelines.

Each applicant was required to meet certain criteria, namely, currently screening a minimum of 25,000 cervical smear samples per annum at each proposed laboratory and the capacity and ability to process smears within a ten-day turnaround in order to facilitate the delivery of results to women within four weeks of their smear test. This requirement is reflected in European guidelines.

To ensure a quality assured service, the NCSS requires participating laboratories to currently screen a minimum of 25,000 cervical smear samples per annum at each proposed laboratory. It was an essential requirement to ensure the necessary level of expertise. Although the overall requirement for the programme is a target of 300,000 smears per annum, the procurement process was designed to allow for one or a number of tenderers if each met all tender criteria.

The second public concern worth addressing is that of a disparity in detection rates between those of Quest Diagnostics and Irish laboratories at the same time. The NCSS has highlighted that the analysis was not a comparative one of identical samples and that in the same analysis the performance of Quest Diagnostics matched that of an Irish accredited lab. Moreover, a high pick-up rate overlooks the fact that an individual laboratory could be overcalling abnormalities and subjecting women to needless anxiety, worry and investigation. A positive smear does not automatically mean a diagnosis of cancer. It means a requirement for further investigation.

See this speech in context