Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

Everyone in this House owes a debt of gratitude to Vicky Phelan. While battling terminal cancer, Vicky took a case to the High Court. She won her case and was offered a settlement if it remained confidential, as we know. It would have been easier for her had she acquiesced, but she refused to accept the culture of secrecy that too often accompanies scandals in Irish public life. This was not in her interests but was in the public interest. Vicky was concerned that if she stayed silent, nothing would change and other women would face the same fate as her, namely, to die of a treatable disease because of faults in the screening system. She was not willing to accept that. Crucially, she felt that when things go wrong, patients and their families must be informed. They should expect openness and honesty. If the health service does not recognise a problem, how can it deal with it?

There has been reform of the cervical screening programme because of Vicky Phelan and many other women who became involved in the cervical check issue. However, some of the important changes that Vicky advocated remain outstanding. The Taoiseach has referred to some of them. I want to pursue a number in more detail.

The HSE introduced a national open disclosure policy in 2013, but we all know that open disclosure does not always happen. The purpose of the patient safety Bill is to change this. It is to make the policy of open disclosure mandatory rather than discretionary. Unfortunately, as we have just discussed, the progress of the Bill through the House has been desperately slow. It was introduced in 2019 and there has been an eight-month delay in moving from Committee Stage to Report Stage. The Taoiseach has to bear in mind that it still needs to make its way through the Seanad, so I ask him whether the commitment he has just given, which is to have the Bill completed before the end of the year, includes its passage through the Seanad.

Progress on another important development has also been far too slow. The State's only cervical screening lab, at the Coombe hospital, is currently only screening private smears. Public screening, including screening for CervicalCheck, stopped after the cyberattack, although private work continues in the laboratory. Meanwhile, 160,000 slides were sent to the United States for analysis in just the first seven months of this year. There was a commitment in the wake of the CervicalCheck failures that the analysis of these slides would be carried out in total in Ireland. Four years later, that has not happened.

Vicky Phelan was always adamant that action was important to her, not platitudes and empty promises. When can we expect that the commitments made to Vicky and the other women who are victims of this failure will be honoured? When will mandatory disclosure be the law of the land in its entirety? I am talking about the passage of the legislation through both Houses. When is it expected that the new national cervical screening laboratory will be fully staffed with appropriate staff and operating? When can we expect all CervicalCheck slides to be processed in Ireland?

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