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

I join Deputy Bríd Smith in welcoming the establishment of 221 Plus, the new support group for the women and families affected by CervicalCheck.

As Members will know, that is being supported and funded by the Department of Health.

The decision on outsourcing was made by a previous Government more than ten years ago, so I have no political axe to grind in defending it or any interest in that regard. It was made before the party I lead came to office. It is important, however, to have regard to Dr. Scally's report. We asked him to study this matter and report to us. He found that the laboratories, namely, the Coombe, the private laboratories in Ireland and the private laboratories in the US, were all up to standard and that there was not a significant difference in the quality of those laboratories. That may not fit in with the Deputy's particular ideology but, regardless of anyone's ideology, that is what he found, that the laboratories, whether Irish or American, whether private or public, were all up to standard and up to scratch.

It is also important to remember what Dr. Scally stated in his report. He pointed out that if one provides cervical screening for 1,000 women, 20 will have cancer or pre-cancer, screening will pick up 15 of those, it will miss five, and those five are the false negatives, but all false negatives are not negligent. In fact, most false negatives are not negligent. False negatives are part and parcel of screening. They are a known limitation of screening, so the fact, or non-fact, that there may be more false negatives in one laboratory or another cannot be seen to be a sign of higher levels of negligence in one laboratory over another. It is important for those of us who are interested in the facts and the truth about this issue that we understand that and that we do not spin or twist these things to suit our own narrative. False negatives, by the way, occur in all laboratories. There is no laboratory that did not have false negatives and there is no laboratory that will not have some degree, unfortunately, of medical error or negligence, whether Irish or American, or whether public or private.

Discussions are ongoing with the laboratories as to how we can continue the cervical screening process. We all want cervical screening to continue. The one way to ensure that lives will be lost is if screening does not continue because we know that screening has saved lives and that the incidence of cervical cancer has been going down in Ireland for the past few years because of the HPV vaccine and screening. We want to make sure that screening continues.

What will not happen and what is not being considered is any sort of retrospective liability or the State covering retrospective liability. That is not something that is under consideration at all. Most of the services are already back in Ireland. MedLab and the Coombe are in Ireland, so most of the services are already in Ireland. It is my view and that of the Minister for Health that when we go to procurement for the new HPV-based test, we will want to make sure the laboratories are of the highest quality and standard.

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