Lisa Chambers (Mayo, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

This situation has gone beyond serious. The Minister for Health single-handedly caused this backlog and he has failed to get to grips with it. MedLab treats patients and deals with women in rural Ireland, so women in all of the rural constituencies wait much longer than others. The wait to get a smear result has increased from five or six weeks to eight months. Women are being informed that their tests have expired and that they must come back in for further repeat smear tests, having sought repeat tests in the first instance because they were worried. These repeat tests were meant to provide reassurance. What is the Government doing to fix the problem? Where is the extra capacity? Where are the additional resources? When will the backlog be cleared?

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