Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I will be sharing one minute at the end. I thank the Acting Chair. The Minister went on to say "That decision was made in conjunction with my officials, including the Chief Medical Officer, and it was supported by Opposition politicians". As an Opposition politician, I will accept that it was. The Minister also said that he accepts that this "has caused a backlog, which cannot be easily fixed merely by resources." and stated "It is not true for Members to state in this House that the repeat smear test was offered against official advice." That is the Minister's position.

I would like to put a point to the Minister to get his response. These charges were made based on documentary evidence seen. In the interests of full transparency, I will put the evidence to the Minister and then he might respond. On 15 June the chief executive officer of Sonic Healthcare, which runs the laboratory in Sandyford that deals with approximately half of the testing in the country, wrote to the Minister saying that urgent intervention was needed to cope with the increased demand after the announcement of the free rechecks. Dr. Colin Goldschmidt wrote that there had been a fivefold increase in requests for smear tests which was resulting in "increasing delays in the delivery of results to CervicalCheck". That is the chief executive officer essentially asking the Minister to stop the smear test rechecks. I believe he offered to fly to Dublin to meet the Minister in order to talk that through.

In August 2018, GPs wrote a letter to the National Screening Service, which was copied to the Minister and the Taoiseach. The GPs warned that a chronic backlog is cervical cancer smear tests was putting the quality and accuracy of the checks at risk. On 15 October a gynaecologist located in the mid-west region warned the Minister that his announcement of free repeat smear tests was "dangerous" and put the CervicalCheck screening programme at risk.

On 21 October, the CervicalCheck project team wrote to the Minister asking him to end the offer of the free smear rechecks as it was putting pressure on the healthcare system. On 24 January, the Taoiseach admitted in the Dáil that a significant number of women taking the repeat smear as well as the regular test had led to immense pressure on lab capacity. I believe we will have time for responses from the Minister in this debate. That is the evidence and the basis of the allegations made.

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