Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Once again, I am not at all familiar with Ms Kiely's case. We will have to look into it. Not being familiar with the case, I cannot tell the Deputy how many cases are similar to it. I would not be able to answer that question. It might be worth sharing the six conclusions of the report with Deputies. The first is that cervical screening saves lives, including many of those women who consented to take part in the review. The second is that cervical screening cannot prevent all cases and will fail to prevent between 30% and 35% of cancers, even in well run programmes. Of the 1,034 women who took part in this audit, it is to be expected that 30% to 35% would have discordance. That was the case. Some 29.8%, or 308 women, had discordance and in approximately half of these cases, it may have had a clinical impact. I suppose that is the number of women who could apply to join the group.

The third conclusion is that the pattern of discordance in this review resembled that in a similar but larger-scale slide review in England. When the service was audited in England, the same or similar levels of discordance were found.

The fourth conclusion is that screening failures have serious consequences for the women affected, as we know.

The fifth relates specifically to colposcopy. Scrutiny of colposcopy revealed that there were cases where better management could have yielded better outcomes. It found evidence that clinical practice guidelines had not always been adhered to. While this will not usually result in cancer, when we examine cancer cases following colposcopy it is expected that suboptimal management will be identified. This is far from concluding that colposcopic practice in the CervicalCheck programme is substandard, but it serves as a reminder that guidelines are in place to minimise poor outcomes.

The sixth finding is that the CervicalCheck programme is working effectively. There is no evidence that the population risk of cancer, having been screened in the programme, is significantly higher than that in any other national programme.

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