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

I again want to put on the record that we have no evidence that our cervical screening programme is below international standards in any way. We do not have any reason to believe that our cervical screening programme is any less accurate or is poorer that any cervical screening programme, but it does have limitations. Let us not forget that in the past ten years, 50,000 women have had lesions identified and because we had a cervical screening programme, those 50,000 women were treated early and many did not go on to develop cancer as a result. We should not forget that because this is a programme that works and saves lives. The biggest tragedy that could come out of this would be a significant fall off in the number of women going for smear tests because that will certainly cost lives and in some cases, cost women their fertility if they manage to survive.

It is a fine line. Discovering the difference between normal error and negligent error will be a fine line. We are talking about something that was within the limitations of screening compared to something that should not have been missed under any circumstances. It will not be as simple as just saying black and white. There will be areas of grey in between and that is part of what the scoping inquiry and the clinical review will have to work out. I explained earlier what I meant by retrospection bias. One cannot use that clinical audit and extrapolate from it that there is a 14% error rate because when they did the audit, they looked back at those slides knowing that these women had been diagnosed with cervical cancer. Therefore, they knew that it should have been positive.

That is not the same as looking at slides and samples de novowhen one does not what one is supposed to be looking for on them.

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