Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for agreeing to this question and answer session, which will be very useful.

I will begin by addressing the new information the Minister revealed to the Chamber this evening. There is a great deal of public confusion, fear and anger on this issue. Women have asked me if they might get a phone call to tell them the caller is very sorry but the woman has cervical cancer. We know that is not the case and that the women who will be contacted have been already diagnosed with cancer. However, it gives an indication of the level of fear out there. I acknowledge the Minister coming to the Chamber and sharing the information as he did before a carefully-crafted response on the issue was prepared but I wish to get into the detail of it.

The Minister stated, "While CervicalCheck has audited all cases notified to it, I have been informed that a potentially considerable number of cases will not have been subjected to an audit of their screening history." CervicalCheck carried out an audit in the case of 1,482 women who had been diagnosed with cervical cancer and a review was warranted in 442 of those cases. Some 208 false negatives were discovered and 162 of the women affected by those findings were not told of them.

In terms of trying to understand how many more cases might be out there, a total of 2,100 cases are recorded on the registry between 2008 and 2014. Assuming there were approximately 250 new cases per year - it used to be approximately 300 but has decreased - for 2015 to 2017, inclusive, and 2018 to date would total approximately 900 additional cases. Therefore, from 2008 until now there have been approximately 3,000 cases. CervicalCheck stated it has been informed in approximately 1,500 cases but a back of the envelope calculation suggests there may be approximately double that number. I appreciate it may be unfair to throw numbers at the Minister in this manner and I am not trying to catch him out but does he have a sense whether we are talking about a few more cases, double the number or many times more?

See this speech in context