Peter Fitzpatrick (Louth, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Previous Governments promised to rectify the errors that resulted in the CervicalCheck scandal of 2018 involving several women, including Vicky Phelan, Eileen Rushe and Lynsey Bennett, receiving incorrect smear test results for cervical cancer. For reasons that must be obvious, many women in Ireland have lost confidence in the outsourcing of lab tests to the United States. Yet cervical screening, human papilloma virus, HPV, and cytology sample processing at the State’s only lab, the recently opened national laboratory at the Coombe university hospital in Dublin, has been paused due to accreditation suspensions and outsourced to the US.

Not only has the screening been outsourced again, but the screening service has also been downgraded. If abnormal cells were detected through smear testing ten years ago, a colposcopy biopsy would have been carried out and the affected cells would have been removed to prevent them from turning cancerous. Aftercare then included yearly smear tests for the patient for ten consecutive years. We all know that finding abnormal cells early is the best preventative of cancer.

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