Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Once again, I want to say how deeply concerned and upset I and the whole Government are at the situation with which we are now grappling. We still do not know all the facts, and last night, as Members will be aware, new information was given to the Minister only a short time before he came into this House to make a statement and answer questions. He was put in the unenviable position of disclosing information to the House without having all the information himself, and we certainly do not have all the information.

I ask for some time and space to allow us to establish the facts and space for calm and for facts, which the Leader of the Opposition mentioned. There is an old piece of wisdom, which is, "Act in haste, repent at leisure." Whatever we do, I want to make sure we do the right thing. I do not want us to act in haste, make the wrong decision collectively, and then be sorry for it into the future. I know that many women in Ireland are very worried about this and many are feeling very vulnerable today.

As a Taoiseach, as a doctor, and as a brother of two sisters, I want to say a few things. First, this controversy relates to women who were already diagnosed with cervical cancer and are receiving treatment. There are many women in the country at the moment who are worried that they might have cancer and worried that the HSE and CervicalCheck know that and have not told them. That is not the case. Nobody is going to get a phone call or letter in the next few days to tell them that they have cancer and that it had been concealed from them in some way.

There are also many women who are worried about their smear tests, many of whom I have met in recent days. They are women who have a had a smear test recently, been given the all-clear, and are now wondering if that is true. I can reassure them that if they have been given the all-clear, it is true. There is a margin of error in these tests but it is under 1%, as is the case with all screening programmes internationally. We have no reason to believe that the information people have been given, to the effect that their tests are clear, is untrue. If anybody is concerned, we invite them to visit their GP to discuss the situation and we will meet the cost of the consultation and the repeat smear test. I thank the National Association of General Practitioners, NAGP, and the Irish Medical Organisation, IMO for their co-operation in this regard.

To the women of Ireland, I want to say that I am determined to get to the bottom of this, to establish the facts and to restore confidence in our cancer screening system. A number of actions have been agreed this morning. First, we are going to ask a team of expert international cytopathologists to carry out a clinical review and to look again at the smears of all the women who were diagnosed with cancer in the past ten years. We do not have the exact figure but it is between 2,000 and 3,000. We will most likely find out that the majority of the additional 1,500, of whom we spoke yesterday, never had a smear test. The review will be led by the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists and will try to identify the genuine false negatives and those cases which should have been reported differently. We believe this can be completed by the end of May.

Later this year, we are also going to bring in a new, more accurate smear test and we will be among the first countries in the world to do this. There will still be false negatives but not as many as in the past.

This test will be available to all women who want it. They will not have to wait three years for their routine appointment. This will be expensive and logistically difficult but it is something we need to do. There will be a statutory inquiry. There are limitations to a HIQA inquiry. We know what they are. There are problems also with a commission of inquiry and what we know what they are as well.

There is a committee hearing today. We would like that committee hearing to take place as it provides an opportunity for many of the senior officials and senior doctors to answer some questions. Following the hearing, the Minister for Health will invite the spokespeople to meet him to discuss the best form of inquiry that should take place.

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