Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

It is eight days since the news of Vicky Phelan's case came into the public domain, eight days since her amazing courage and her determination to speak the truth alerted the country and thousands of women in Ireland to the dereliction of duty and responsibility which CervicalCheck and the HSE unleashed on her and her family and, possibly, thousands of others. In that eight days, there has been an enormous sense of worry, concern and anger throughout the country. Many women are petrified that they will be affected and they are trying to get answers and information. Despite this need for answers and information, there has been no sense of urgency in providing those answers or information.

Over these eight days we have learned that in the cases of at least 208 women who were diagnosed with cervical cancer, an original smear test had falsely given them the all-clear. Seventeen of those women have passed away, only two of whom were informed about the false positive before they passed. The remaining 15 women were not told and instructions were issued by somebody to note the false audit on their files but not to brief their families. Eight days on, there are still, we understand, another 38 of those 208 women who have yet to be informed about their smear tests being wrong. Why the delay in informing these 38 women? We now also know that there are potentially a further 1,500 women who have been diagnosed with cervical cancer over the past ten years, whose original smear test was not audited. This information was, apparently, only given to the Minister for Health, Deputy Harris, last Tuesday evening, two weeks after the Department became aware of the gravity of this issue. Again, why the delay?

For many women the first point of contact to get the information was their general practitioner, GP. If they got an appointment with their GP, they found that CervicalCheck only formally contacted GPs this morning, eight days later, and it provided a completely innocuous update which provided no new information to the thousands of GPs who are struggling to deal with this issue. Again, why the delay? Many other women, more than 6,000 we are led to believe, have contacted the helpline yet many are still awaiting a call back from a health care professional. It was only last night, another week into this crisis, that the Minister allocated 40 nurses to deal with this backlog. Again, why the delay?

There is no sense being given to women of this country that somebody in Government or the HSE is in charge of this situation. There is no sense that somebody understands the trauma being experienced by women in terms of the lack of information and the concerns they and their families have.

I would like the Tánaiste to answer a number of questions to assist in alleviating this worry. When will the 38 women who have yet to be informed of their audit be informed? Will all of these women receive full medical support? I am aware of at least one of these women whose medical card was withdrawn in recent weeks by HSE medical cards, in respect of which she is being put through the wringer to provide information, yet she was able to get a telephone call recently to inform her of false positive. When will the families of the 15 deceased women be formally contacted to advise them that their loved one was the subject of false audit? When will the helpline callbacks be completed?. When will women get the information that they are looking for from a health care professional?

The Taoiseach announced that women can have new smear tests undertaken, which is a welcome development. Will these smear tests be audited in a different laboratory from those that are being used to audit smear tests? Does the Tánaiste have confidence in the ability of the director general of the HSE to restore confidence in our cancer screening programme and does he agree that given the scale of the job to restore that confidence, the director general should step aside from every other interest in order that he can concentrate fully on that job?

This morning, Vicky Phelan called for the scoping inquiry agreed last evening to be held in public. Does the Government agree with her call?

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