Ruth Coppinger (Dublin West, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

I have only four minutes but it is completely insufficient for the points which I want to raise.

A substantial number of memos were sent around from the Minister's office. Over seven months, these memos record that the issue of non-disclosure to victims was discussed in several meetings by dozens of people. We are meant to believe that the previous Minister for Health, now the Taoiseach, and the current Minister were not informed. That is frankly not believable. In the memos, it shows that legal cases were being discussed for seven months. In one meeting, on 3 March 2016, the matter comes up under the heading AOB at a meeting attended by 12 people from the Department of Health, the NCCP, National Cancer Control Programme, and the HSE. It stated that letters will issue to clinicians - hardly an AOB item. The next reference is 29 March 2016 to the chief medical officer from the national director of health and well-being. He seems to have been very involved in all of this. The issue of cover-up was immediately raised in that second memo in March which we saw at the meeting of the Committee of Public Accounts. By April, a formal process of informing clinicians, references to volumes of letters and labs threatening legal action if the information is passed over.

By June, there is a seven-page letter sent to doctors to explain how not to tell their patients. For example, there is advice to doctors that when a case is reviewed, if the woman does not wish to be informed, her preference should be respected. How would the woman know she does not want to be informed if she is not actually informed? The advice is not to tell people about the audit unless they ask about it. It is outrageous.

The same letter also stated that if the woman asked about her screening history, she should be informed at this time about the audit process. She was not to be told about the audit process in the first place. That level of meticulous planning by a whole load of people in three sectors of the health service is not believable. It is not believable that people at the top of the Department of Health did not think to tell the Minister that one of the major health programmes of the State, the CervicalCheck programme, was under serious threat. All of the language throughout is about mitigating the risk.

In the middle of all of this - the Taoiseach was Minister at the time - while the companies are threatening legal action, they are actively encouraged to enter a closed bidding process to get the contract for another two years. Why was that done? Was there no concern whatsoever about the different lab results from the three labs which were put up on the CervicalCheck site? Will the new smear tests that women are allowed to get still go to Quest laboratories? Over the weekend, Ministers said they were not using the Vicky Phelan lab but they are still using Quest which has a much lower detection rate than the others. Will the Minister for Health invest in public labs attached to public hospitals for the HPV vaccine?

I have run out of time but I do not believe the Taoiseach or the Minister were not informed of all of this cover-up.

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