Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I am. I am going to take the first five minutes for an exchange with the Minister.

Last week, we discussed the ongoing closure of the screening programmes. The Minister just referred to them again. He said at the time that screening would recommence as soon as possible. I believe those are the words the National Screening Service gave to him. Given that general practitioners can now take smear tests, "as soon as possible" would mean that CervicalCheck screening should restart now, but that is not what is happening. Two days ago, the National Screening Service provided a detailed update as to what is happening. As the Minister said, the service will not announce the restart dates until the end of this month even though general practitioners say they can start now.

Screening is expected to have begun a phased reintroduction by the end of summer but that means hundreds of thousands of people are not going to be screened at the same time as doctors are saying they are ready to do that screening. This morning on the radio the clinical director of BreastCheck said she was not in a position to give any kind of indication as to when it hopes to resume full service.

The approach also seems to suggest screening will not start until symptomatic cases are dealt with. The national bowel cancer screening service has indicated there is a backlog of several months just to provide care to people already identified as being at high risk. The implication seems to be that screening will not be reopened until this backlog is dealt with. The logic, therefore, for CervicalCheck and bowel cancer screening seems to be that because we cannot provide the post-screening care, we will simply not screen people, which worries me greatly. It seems to take away from the patient the option of sourcing other care somewhere else. It seems to defy logic to say that because we cannot provide the care, we will not even tell people if they are at a high risk.

Is the Minister satisfied with the timeline of starting these processes at the end of the summer? If GPs are saying they can do cervical cancer screening now, why are we waiting several months? What level of capacity from the private hospitals is being brought in to provide the downstream care, such as colonoscopy, histopathology and colposcopy?

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