Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for raising this issue. I think anybody who has listened to this story or read about it will come to the conclusion that this was a shameful series of events, particularly where information flow is concerned. The tragedy and challenges that Ms Vicky Phelan and her family are facing now have been made all the more difficult because of the failings in passing information on. For that, as Tánaiste I want to apologise to her and to her family.

It might be helpful for me to put on the record what is going to change as a result and how that has come about. In 2014, at the time when Vicky Phelan was diagnosed, CervicalCheck initiated clinical reviews for all notified cases of cervical cancer arising from screening. At that time, the information was used to inform improvements in the system and was not communicated to clinicians or to patients. This changed in late 2016, and subsequently current and historical outcomes of the audit process were made available to clinicians for communication to their patients on request. Ms Phelan rightly contends that she should have been made aware of the outcome of the audit process which related to her in 2014, and we agree with that. It has now been decided that patients will be advised as part of the process in the future. That will not be optional. It will be automatic. A process is also under way to identify any other women affected in the same way as Ms Phelan to ensure that they are informed as is necessary.

Each year, approximately 250,000 women have a cervical cancer screening, or smear test as most of us would know it, through CervicalCheck. CervicalCheck has found over 50,000 pre-cancerous changes in women, leading to appropriate early treatment, which of course is what this is all about. It is important to say that while this case is tragic and should not have happened in the way that it did, we cannot allow it to undermine confidence and faith in CervicalCheck as a whole. This is a screening programme. There is no such thing as a perfect screening programme. Mistakes can be made and mistakes were made in this case. However, it is true to say that cervical cancer screening aims to reduce the instance of mortality in cervical cancer. Instances of cervical cancer in Ireland have fallen by about 7% annually and continue to fall and CervicalCheck is playing a big part in that. However, that is no consolation to the Phelan family today.

What I want to say is that it is regrettable that Ms Phelan needed to take court action to establish the truth. It is certainly regrettable that decisions were not made before now to require patients to have automatic access to information that relates to them. That applies particularly in the cases of women who are diagnosed with cervical cancer, where audits automatically take place if they have previously been through a screening programme to establish whether any mistakes were made. Hopefully that answers some of the Deputy's questions.

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