Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

My question is on the commitments given in the programme for Government on collective responsibility. There have been many quotes from Emma Mhic Mhathúna here this morning but one thing she said was that this Government is totally incapable of minding us and that it has to go. I would like the Minister's response to that. I would also like to know what happened to the promise given to the Joint Committee of Health by the HSE that it would give us a breakdown of the figures on the 2018 outstanding false negative tests and from what labs they came. We learned from questions tabled this week by Deputy Richard Boyd Barrett that all ten legal cases arose from tests carried out in an American lab. We need to know where the 208 tests were carried out. We were given that commitment by Tony O'Brien last week. We still do not have the information. I believe this information will show that most of the botched tests were carried out in America and that the root of this problem and of the deaths of these women is the outsourcing of our health service to the US when that was strongly warned against in 2008. The previous Minister for Health, James Reilly, was the most vehement opponent of the measure brought in by the Fianna Fáil-Green Party Government of the time to outsource women's health. The Government outsources us to Britain to have abortions. Our smear tests are being outsourced to America----

See this speech in context