Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

When the scandal in regard to the Vicky Phelan case and the women involved in the cervical cancer screening programme not being informed of the audit outcomes first emerged in this House, I used the phrase, "Everybody knew, but nobody knew". In terms of the documentation produced yesterday by the Department, these words ring very true because everybody within the national screening programme, CervicalCheck, at senior level in the HSE and key officials in the Department of Health and Children knew. When Deputy Donnelly and I met the Minister, Deputy Harris, and his officials at that time, we got a commitment from the Minister that notwithstanding any inquiry to be established, he would publish information as he got it and he would not seek to suppress any Dáil committee or the Dáil considering the issues pertaining to the cervical cancer screening programme.

I was amazed last week when the three memos emerged at the Committee of Public Accounts. I would have thought the Minister would have summoned his officials and demanded all of this documentation and published it in an ordered and structured way. It has taken us three weeks to get to the level of documentation received yesterday. The Taoiseach said on "Six One" last week that he does not think the Committee of Public Accounts is the place to discuss this matter, in respect of which Ministers followed suit. There appears to be an agenda to push the Committee of Public Accounts and other Dáil committees to one side. We got a commitment from the Minister that no attempt would be made either to prevent publication or to prevent Dáil committees doing their work on this matter and that the inquiry would not be used as an attempt to bury information away from the public domain. The Government should adhere to this commitment.

In regard to the documentation, it is clear that the policy of open disclosure is very much a live issue throughout 2016. Every month they are meeting and the CervicalCheck audit is on the agenda. These are joint meetings between the Department of Health senior officials, the chief medical officer, the National Cancer Screening Service and CervicalCheck, and they are saying that while CervicalCheck supports the principles of open disclosure, it is recognised that there are limitations to its universal implementation, particularly for screening services where there is an inherent recognised error rate. At the same time, the then Minister is proclaiming his commitment to introduce mandatory open disclosure.

Will the Minister, Deputy Bruton, commit to the publication of all the advice received by the then Minister from the chief medical officer on the policy of mandatory open disclosure? Is the position of the senior officials in the HSE and CervicalCheck that an exemption is required from open disclosure in terms of the screening programme, filtering across the wider policy of going against what the Minister originally proclaimed publicly, namely, that he would introduce mandatory reporting? This was subsequently changed in policy terms. What is the reason for this and will the Minister, Deputy Bruton, commit to publication of the advice in regard to the volte-facein terms of open disclosure?

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