Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I offer my good wishes given the day that is in it. They will probably be a bit superfluous to requirements since there is already so much love in the Chamber between the two parties of Government. In the wake of the CervicalCheck scandal, the buzz word about this place was "confidence". However, the revelations of the past few days regarding cervical screening do nothing but undermine confidence in a system that can barely afford further controversy. The Tánaiste should not take my word for it. The Irish Cancer Society has expressed worry about the delays. At a meeting of the Joint Committee on Health yesterday, officials from the Department of Health said that no capacity analysis had been conducted regarding the ability of the CervicalCheck programme to carry out extra smear tests once the free tests had been announced by the Minister in April 2018.

This has resulted in a backlog of 78,000 tests and in some women waiting up to 27 weeks for their results. Imagine that wait. It is disgraceful.

I happen to believe that offering free tests to women who wanted them, given the calamity we witnessed last year in respect of CervicalCheck, was the right thing to do but the Minister should have ensured that the capacity was there to deliver. It is patently clear now he did not do that. It is yet another shocking example of the shambles of a system this Minister presides over and it is further evidence that he is not up to the job of leading our health service.

Given the scale of the CervicalCheck crisis, the very first thing the Minister should have done before offering free smear tests was to make it absolutely certain that the volume of additional tests could be dealt with within the medically indicated timeframe. The position of the Department of Health is that it was impossible to quantify the uptake in respect of repeat smear tests. This is nonsense. It is a relatively recent scandal. I am sure the Tánaiste will recall the public outcry and the interest in this subject at the time, so it is little wonder that 90,000 women availed of the offer of a free repeat test. We all now know about the Jade Goody effect, which, in 2009, gave rise to an increase in the number of women seeking tests in the wake of the death of that young woman. It is no wonder that it happened here. In fact, it is entirely predictable that it would happen here. However, what we got instead was a soundbite when no work had been done in advance.

We need to be able to trust the Minister for Health, the Department of Health and the HSE to respond appropriately and intelligently in a crisis. What work was undertaken since these backlogs were reported as far back as August of last year? Why has the backlog grown so continuously almost month on month? Is it the case that no effective action was taken? If action was taken, why are these actions not working to reduce the waiting times? Furthermore, what work is being undertaken at this time to ensure this backlog is cleared urgently and that tests are carried out within a recommended timeframe? What is the new revised deadline for the roll-out of the HPV test since two deadlines have already been missed?

See this speech in context