Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

As a woman, there is absolutely no chance of me not going for a cervical smear test. I believe this reflects the view of the majority of women who are very well versed in the necessity to care for their health and the efficacy and value of screening. The Taoiseach should not repeat that again to avoid answering the questions that have been put. He said it might have been a cock-up. That might be his view, but it was some cock-up that left women without information to which they were entitled, information that affected their lives and the medical treatment they might seek. It was subsequently kept from families when women deceased. We know of 17 women so far, but I dare say there were more. It is quite a cock-up. The withholding of the information was not accidental. It was clearly the policy and the strategy of the HSE to keep it from women and their families. How do we know this? We know it because Vicky Phelan and her legal representatives painstakingly and painfully established the facts in her case via the courts. She is not on her own and not unique.

Mr. Tony O'Brien's contract finishes in a couple of weeks. I put it to the Taoiseach as head of the Government that it is a scandal that Mr. O'Brien will be left in his post for those weeks to sail off into the sunset with a large pension and a hefty gratuity, leaving a scene of devastation, upset and trauma behind him. If the Taoiseach is serious about providing leadership on this matter and reassuring women across the State, he would do the first thing that needs to happen - to remove that incompetent man from the position he holds.

See this speech in context