Alan Kelly (Tipperary, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I have only five minutes and look forward to the six minutes of questions more than to these five minutes. I want to commence by asking the Minister to do something. Yesterday in the Dáil, the Taoiseach stated - I know what I am talking about here - that representatives of Ruth Morrissey were aware of the decision to appeal the case. They were not.

The Taoiseach has been communicated with and has been told the facts and while the Minister and I can speak and hold a debate in this House, the people outside of these Houses do not have the capacity to defend themselves in here. I ask that the Minister go to the Taoiseach to deal with that matter on the floor of the Dáil Chamber, to correct the record and to get to the facts of what happened. Ruth Morrissey's representatives were not told beforehand. I ask that the Minister would please do that.

I will begin my statement by acknowledging the people who got us to this point: Vicky Phelan in particular, without whom we would not be here; Emma Mhic Mhathúna - may she rest in peace; and Ruth Morrissey, whose case was in the High Court for 36 days. It is a national disgrace. After what the Taoiseach said on RTÉ's "Six One", it is a national disgrace and I will never forget it. It is the Minister's decision and I do not agree with the Minister's decision or the Government's decision on where this is going. According to this decision, Ireland is looking for a lesser standard of testing than in the UK.

This lady who has fought so hard for these women - and whose legacy this is - should not be left in this situation for the next months. It will take a significant amount of time for the case to get into the Supreme Court. It is not necessary. The future will tell us. The manner in which communication was done with Ms Morrissey and her representatives and the manner in which she found out that the Government would appeal the High Court decision is something we should all regret.

I have many questions with regard to the Scally report. Dr. Scally will come before the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Health in July, which I welcome. I take a lot of what Dr. Scally had brought out in his first report as being absolutely essential, including the 50 recommendations. I always had a serious issue with quality assurance in respect of the laboratories and the Minister is aware that I have pursued this issue for a long time. I was disappointed that it took nine months. I do not know why it took nine months to get to the bottom of this. I will have serious questions to ask at the committee. On the floor of the Chamber tonight, however, I want to ask the Minister something else on behalf of the women, their families and the patient representatives such as Lorraine Walsh and Stephen Teap, who the Minister knows well. Through the Minister and the Government, we need to give them a full apology. I put it to colleagues that we now know the extent of what has happened. They need a full apology based on Dr. Scally completing his report.

The HSE has also said it would look into its own organisation, its processes and what happened. A commitment was made on this by the former interim director general at the HSE, John Connaghan. Will the new director general do that? Will the Minister confirm whether he has asked him to do that?

There are women, some of whom I have named, who probably will never know where their test slides were misread. Some of the laboratories do not exist any longer or, as Dr. Scally has acknowledged, he may never find some laboratories. Only that the report was extended for an extra four months, I doubt Dr. Scally would have found some of the information he did. We need to understand that.

I have much to say on this matter but I will make one final point and then come back to questions. Given that the HSE had the contracts in place, given that the laboratories did not get agreement from the HSE and given that we are going through a huge volume of court cases, were these laboratories not in breach of contract? Dr. Scally's report goes as far as bringing it up to the point of saying it. There may be legal reasons why he did not say it. Surely the laboratories were in breach of contract. Outside of the disgraceful situation in which it left the women and their families, surely it also means there are issues to be considered from a liability perspective and breach of contract.

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