Alan Kelly (Tipperary, Labour) | Oireachtas source

Yesterday, we finally got the aggregate report from the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, RCOG, on the CervicalCheck programme. We are thinking of the 159 women who had missed opportunities to get interventions. Following the publication of the report, the 221+ group will help and support those women over the coming weeks. We know that cancer screening is not diagnostic and is not perfect. We also know that the promotion of screening is critically important. This House knows that screening saves lives. Collectively, all of us are making progress on HPV screening and HPV vaccinations, on which my party has led. We are changing the quality assurance and management of our screening programmes. All of this good work represents good progress.

We know there have been a large volume of mistakes and errors in the administration of the screening programme when it comes to the HSE and the Department of Health. This has been demonstrated in the two Scally reports and the MacCraith report and has been compounded by incredibly inept communications and failures with regard to mandatory disclosure. Yesterday, the chief patient advocate who was on the RCOG review and the cervical cancer steering group, Lorraine Walsh, told us that she resigned from both roles on 31 October last. I know Lorraine Walsh very well. She is one of the most formidable people I have ever met in my life. She explained on "Prime Time" on RTÉ last night that she resigned because she simply did not have confidence in the RCOG review. For me, this is some revelation. On 22 October when I and the Taoiseach stood here and he apologised to the women of Ireland for what happened to them through the screening programme, I raised with him, in fact I pleaded with him, in relation to an intervention on the RCOG review because I had fears that the same mistakes were going to be repeated. Unfortunately, he did not listen.

Today I am asking questions on behalf of Lorraine Walsh. The minutes of the cervical review meeting on 6 October state that over 50% of all reviews carried out by RCOG and sent to the HSE had to be sent back. How were proper controls for this review not in place by then and that that amount had to be sent back to RCOG to be re-examined? It has been revealed that three women, from a total of 1,051, had their slides relabelled in error as part of this process. Two of the three women in question were Lorraine Walsh, the patient advocate, and Vicky Phelan, who revealed all of this on day one. Statistically, what are the chances of them being two of the three women, from a total of 1,051 women, who had the labels taken off their slides and moved around onto other women's slides? How could Lorraine Walsh get two reports from RCOG on 15 November and 16 November, one saying her report was concurrent and the other saying it was the total opposite? How was that possible over 24 hours? How did RCOG know that it was Lorraine Walsh's report without her confidentiality being broken? Finally, how many women whose slides were lost or unavailable have been told as part of the RCOG review that their reports were concurrent when we do not actually know and they should be categorised as unknown?

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