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

-----compliments in both directions.

I have read and heard about Irene and Stephen Teap and their family. It is a very sad story and one which has affected everyone in the country. Indeed the Tánaiste met with and spoke to Mr. Teap over the weekend to hear about his concerns, to talk to him and to hear what he has to say. Many of us saw the photograph on the front page of The Sunday Timesover the weekend. It was a picture of a beautiful young family, a perfect family which has been broken apart by the tragedy of cancer compounded by the fact that Ms Teap was not told about the false negative smear test, as she should have been, and by the two opportunities to intervene earlier which were lost. Everyone can understand the sorrow and anger which must be felt in equal measure by the family and by their friends.

In terms of accountability, of course people want accountability and the Government wants it too. I know that people are very annoyed about how this has been handled over the last few weeks, about the drip-drip of information and about the misinformation given on occasion. I assure the Deputy that the Government and I feel exactly the same way. We have had resignations already. The clinical director of CervicalCheck has resigned. The manager of CervicalCheck has stepped aside from her role and has been replaced by Damien McCallion. It may be the case that more heads may roll in the period ahead, but it is important that they are the right heads and that we proceed with this inquiry as the Government has indicated. I do not think that our focus should be on looking for heads. This should not be about any one man.

This should be about the hundreds of women who are affected and the thousands, or perhaps tens of thousands, who are very concerned about whether their smear tests were accurate.

Mr. O'Brien has about eight weeks to serve until his term as director general of the health service ends. His focus during those weeks should be fully on getting to the bottom of this issue. He was in CervicalCheck's offices over the bank holiday weekend. His focus in the coming weeks he has left should be on doing everything he can to get to the bottom of this, to put things right and to restore public confidence in our cancer screening. That is exactly what we expect him to do.

The post of director general will be advertised in the coming weeks. It is very important that we get a good person to take that job and lead the health service forward. The Minister for Health indicated again that it is our intention to re-establish a HSE board, one that can hold the organisation to account. I certainly would welcome the involvement of the Opposition parties in talking to us about how we might structure that board. I do not believe it should be established in the normal way, whereby we go to the Public Appointments Service and get applicants. We need to think on a cross-party basis as to how we can have a very high-powered board made up of people who can establish a layer of accountability between the Department of Health and the executive of the HSE.

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