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

In answer to the Deputy's final question, that is what we are changing. Many of us listened to Vicky Phelan who is an incredibly courageous woman. In the midst of all the challenges she is facing, she focused on the hope that something good may come from this. I hope that is the case and we have an obligation to ensure it is the case. The key issue is the information flow. Once the State has a piece of information that is relevant to a woman in these circumstances, she should be entitled to have this information immediately. It should not move between offices, physicians or anyone else without the patient having automatic access to it. The decision taken this morning was to change the approach and not before time.

It is important that we use accurate language in this discussion. This is not about misdiagnosis. A smear test is not a diagnosis but a screening mechanism that can spot early signs of change which need to be followed up in terms of potential cancer treatment. This is different from a full diagnosis. In this case, we had what was effectively a false negative from the screening programme. Such false negatives occur because there is no perfect screening programme in place anywhere in the world. The view of those involved in CervicalCheck is that the systems in place here are as good as those in place anywhere in the world and better than most. In that regard, CervicalCheck is open to peer review, independent assessment and so on.

Unfortunately in this case, there was a false negative. When Vicky Phelan was subsequently diagnosed with cervical cancer, the audit and checking system, which operates in all such cases to ascertain whether somebody who has a diagnosis of cancer previously had a smear test, found that the result of the smear test was incorrect. Ms Phelan's solicitor has raised the question as to whether the story would have been different in terms of treatment options and so on if this had been known earlier.

The key issue, as Ms Phelan correctly noted, is access to information. We will change this immediately to ensure that anybody who is in a similar position in the future will not have to access information through the courts, which is how Ms Phelan had to do it.

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