Ivana Bacik (Dublin Bay South, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I want to return to the issue of women’s healthcare and the CervicalCheck screening programme. On Tuesday we all spoke in tribute to Vicky Phelan and remarked on the extraordinary legacy she has left and the huge work she did for women's healthcare in her lifetime. On Tuesday, the Tánaiste and the Taoiseach committed to ensuring the speedy passage of the Patient Safety (Notifiable Patient Safety Incidents) Bill 2019 to require mandatory open disclosure and restorative meetings between women and their consultants. This is very welcome. The Tánaiste identified some of the very positive outcomes as a result of the Scally report. More accurate ways to examine the smear tests are now in place and funding has been allocated for a new laboratory in the Coombe hospital to reduce the need for outsourcing. Many of us have been contacted in recent days not just about the Scally report and those changes but also about the 2019 rapid review report of Professor Brian MacCraith looking at the delays in issuing cervical screening retest results to a large cohort of women and their doctors. Will the Tánaiste confirm that the findings of the MacCraith review, which were accepted entirely by the HSE, as we know, have now been implemented along with the Scally report recommendations so that no more women will face the sort of delays that led to such adverse outcomes in the past?

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