Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Speaking as someone who uses the service, I want to know as a right where there are issues.

The Minister might clarify, but my understanding is that, if the anonymous programmatic audit he mentioned had been in place in 2014, Lorraine Walsh, Vicky Phelan and all the others would not have been informed of the discordant slides. We need to remember that this situation came about through someone looking at her file. She opened the file, saw something in it and pursued it. That is not the right way to find out such information. The burden should not be placed on the person who has cancer to ask these questions. It would not be fair. The test of this has to be that, if we took ourselves back to that time, there would have been nothing in the file for Vicky Phelan to ask about. I would welcome clarity from the Minister on this point.

As my colleague, an Teachta Cullinane, stated, we are all here for the same reason and we all want the same outcome. We want to ensure that the service is fit for purpose and women have confidence in it. We all acknowledge that, notwithstanding the good work done by the people who provide its services, which are efficient and well run for the most part, confidence in CervicalCheck has been shaken. Work must be done to rebuild that confidence. From speaking to Dr. Scally, he acknowledges this as well. Some of it is down to misinformation and some is down to people misunderstanding. That will always happen when non-medical people interact with medical people. However, some of it has to do with the fact that women wanted to understand a little more about how the system worked. From reading newspapers recently, they would have seen the correspondence that Ms Mary Harney received as Minister pointing out the issues with outsourcing services. This would not instil people with much confidence. I never liked the idea of my slide venturing off to the US or God knows where else to whatever lab - it turns out that no one knew - without the proper checks and balances being in place. I accept that they may be in place now, but it never sat well with me that this was happening. I do not believe it sits well with other people either. When we hear that Ms Harney had been written to and informed in stark terms about issues with outsourcing, it knocks people's confidence.

We are all here for the same reason. We want to be able to walk out of the Chamber tonight knowing that we have done our best and that, as much as we can as non-clinicians, we have given women confidence in their service, including the confidence to know that, if there is a discordant slide, that information will be conveyed to them as a right and they will not have to ask for it. If we provide the right to ask, perhaps people will not exercise it because they are busy or so on. We should not put the burden of asking on the person who might have cancer. The information should be available as a right.

The test of this has to be that if we were to go back to 2014 we would need to know that things would have been different. The way things worked out then was not good. The outcome was catastrophic for many women and their families. We, therefore, must be able to say with confidence that if we hopped in a time machine and went back to 2014, and the amendments, as the Minister has outlined them, had been passed and in place then, what impact they would have had then. If we were to fast forward back to our own time, would we find ourselves talking about this CervicalCheck scandal?

Nobody likes to hear a service they rely on, a really good service, mentioned with the word "scandal" attached to the end of it. CervicalCheck is a good thing. It is something I have always encouraged people to have done. Talk to any of my friends and they would say I told them to get it done. It is not nice, it is not a bit nice, but it is worth having done. It is surveillance. Not everything will be caught, and I understand all that. When I was my party's health spokesperson, I did not appreciate being spoken to by some of the people in the HSE as if I did not understand what surveillance is. I understand it very well. Believe me, when this procedure is being done, you do find out what it is, where it goes and how it is going to impact. We are all here for the same reason and we want to achieve the same goal; we just need to ensure we get it right.

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