Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputies Donnelly and Bríd Smith. Deputy Kelly also tabled an amendment on this. Deputy Donnelly and I agree on this. We are trying to find a way - he is right that we originally set up a tribunal - to provide a route for compensation if adjudicated. To the 221 group we added the RCOG group. Deputy Donnelly is right that there is now a number of women, a number I expect to be quite small, who declined to partake in the RCOG audit and who were not part of the CervicalCheck audit but to whom I am happy to provide one more time-limited opportunity. The criteria as to what that independent review would look like would absolutely need to be set out and acceptable to my Department for obvious reasons. I therefore suggest, in the interest of allowing for the establishment of this tribunal in the autumn, that I return to the House in the autumn with a legally sound amendment to achieve exactly what Deputy Donnelly seeks to achieve, which is to give that group of women who could have participated in the RCOG audit but chose not to, whatever their reasons were, one more opportunity to participate in some form of independent review that would then allow them access to the tribunal. Were the Deputy happy to withdraw the amendment, I would commit on the floor of the House to return in the autumn with the legally sound way of doing this.

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