Alan Kelly (Tipperary, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for answering the questions for once. There is another aspect to this: the Labour Party has been pushing for a long time for the health technology assessment, HTA, to be brought forward in respect of HPV screening of boys. HIQA must do this. This needs to be brought forward in order that we can have herd immunity and protect the population into the future. I ask the Minister, through Government, to push to ensure this.

This morning, Emma said, "The Government are not actually capable of minding us." We want confirmation that all payments and costs associated with treatment of these women will be covered and that the random sampling will happen. The Minister for Health has come a long way in agreeing to this today and in the past. The HPV funding which is required in respect of the labs and the IT systems should be brought upfront in the next few months and not the next few years. This will cost millions and human resources will have to be allocated. Such resources must be provided. Furthermore, I accept and agree that some people may not want to be out there in the public when it comes to the commission, but some definitely will. If they are speaking on national radio and television, they certainly want to speak in the commission of inquiry in public, so we must allow that to happen.

Finally, there was a real issue regarding the fact that, on Tuesday of last week, the Minister for Health had to walk into this Chamber and say he had been misinformed about the number of women affected. We discovered subsequently, through the National Cancer Registry, that 1,620 women came from a different cache and had cancers and were not part of the audit. It is also important, from a public confidence point of view, that we know that this is the only case in which this has happened, that it is not the case in any of the other screening programmes - for example, in bowel screening. I have had confirmation of that this morning, so that needs to brought out on the public record.

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