Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The Tánaiste did not answer any of the questions I asked. When did the Minister, Deputy Harris, become aware of this? Will the Tánaiste be more specific than just telling us it was in December? What did he do about it? How come we are now in late January and 6,000 women who now need a repeat test have still not been informed? Has the Minister been assured that this is it and there will be no more than 6,000 affected people out there? Will he assure us of that? From what time did this laboratory, Quest Diagnostics, make such a mess and how did it get things so wrong? The director has told us that despite the lab being aware of this in November, it still does not have a clue how this happened.

Mistakes have occurred and will continue to happen in the health service but we have just emerged from a major scandal and many women are still dealing with its consequences. People have lost their lives because of the CervicalCheck scandal and now we have found out that another 6,000 women must have a secondary test done again because the laboratory got things wrong. What happened and why did the Minister not bring this to the attention of the Dáil?

What did he do? How can the Tánaiste assure us that we should have confidence? We need to know that somebody has a grip on this in government and we need to know how it went wrong so I ask the Tánaiste to answer my specific questions. Can he also tell the women in question when they will be contacted?

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