Results 881-900 of 3,336 for speaker:Kate O'Connell

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: Supplementary Report of Scoping Inquiry into CervicalCheck Programme: Discussion (4 Jul 2019)

Kate O'Connell: I want to get to that, too. I do not want to spend too long because I have limited time.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: Supplementary Report of Scoping Inquiry into CervicalCheck Programme: Discussion (4 Jul 2019)

Kate O'Connell: Do we know that the same standard applied when they sent them off to the secret labs? When they subcontracted out to the lab down the road, did they apply the Irish standard or the American standard?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: Supplementary Report of Scoping Inquiry into CervicalCheck Programme: Discussion (4 Jul 2019)

Kate O'Connell: In 2009 a big document was produced by a group on standards for quality assurance. I have it here. It is 320 pages. I had a little look at it last night. The same document on eTenders changed subsequently. The 2009 document is very comprehensive and a very comprehensive group of people fed into it, chaired by Dr. Gráinne Flannelly. It refers to ISO accreditation; I know we have...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: Supplementary Report of Scoping Inquiry into CervicalCheck Programme: Discussion (4 Jul 2019)

Kate O'Connell: I am kind of suspicious of it. Dr. Scally knows how I feel about it and I have read his document a few times. At the end of the day, ISO is international, proper accreditation. In his report, Dr. Scally has basically said it is six of one, half a dozen of this other.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: Supplementary Report of Scoping Inquiry into CervicalCheck Programme: Discussion (4 Jul 2019)

Kate O'Connell: The fact remains that when we went out, we said we wanted ISO. The contract happened. In the contract, it says we want ISO. The contracts were signed. They were not ISO, they were College of American Pathology, CAP. I thought perhaps the labs were in breach of contract. I think I read that somewhere along the way. But really if whoever was in charge at the time was fool enough to sign...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: Supplementary Report of Scoping Inquiry into CervicalCheck Programme: Discussion (4 Jul 2019)

Kate O'Connell: It was done from the start. That is how I see it now. I want to address the position of the Irish National Accreditation Board, INAB, in all this. INAB is the accrediting group; it has a very serious role and is aligned with its international counterparts. Would Dr. Scally be concerned about the retrospective accreditation issue as somebody who, I am sure, is all about standards?...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: Supplementary Report of Scoping Inquiry into CervicalCheck Programme: Discussion (4 Jul 2019)

Kate O'Connell: I looked at this last night. I had never gone onto eTenders before. They publish the questions that other companies ask. Labs apply for tender and they are not actually accredited and they are told. They can see the answer from before that it is not good enough. It is all there already. There was a guy doing veterinary lab work in Ireland who was trying to do some State work. It is...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: Supplementary Report of Scoping Inquiry into CervicalCheck Programme: Discussion (4 Jul 2019)

Kate O'Connell: It does not matter about that.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: Supplementary Report of Scoping Inquiry into CervicalCheck Programme: Discussion (4 Jul 2019)

Kate O'Connell: As legislators, we are really concerned about this. INAB is getting State funding. Its job is to accredit laboratories. It is retrospectively stating "That's grand lads, keep going". It is a matter of concern that this is really what is happening. We cannot have it because our international standing is really important. Deputy O'Reilly referred to the weighting. When was the weighting...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: Supplementary Report of Scoping Inquiry into CervicalCheck Programme: Discussion (4 Jul 2019)

Kate O'Connell: The weighting in question started at 15% in 2012. Did the change in weighting happen gradually over a period or did it happen in 2012?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: Supplementary Report of Scoping Inquiry into CervicalCheck Programme: Discussion (4 Jul 2019)

Kate O'Connell: The weighting applied to quality assurance changed from 18% to 15%. There was a good drop in 2010.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: Supplementary Report of Scoping Inquiry into CervicalCheck Programme: Discussion (4 Jul 2019)

Kate O'Connell: Yes. The cost became more important.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: Supplementary Report of Scoping Inquiry into CervicalCheck Programme: Discussion (4 Jul 2019)

Kate O'Connell: I would argue that such a decision was definitely not made by someone with a clinical background.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: Supplementary Report of Scoping Inquiry into CervicalCheck Programme: Discussion (4 Jul 2019)

Kate O'Connell: Having read various transcripts last night, I am aware that the committee has spent a lot of time on quality assurance, QA. Our guests were not involved at a meeting of the Committee of Public Accounts at which we were assured that QA visits were taking place. A pathologist went over at one stage. I read through the relevant transcript last night. There were random visits. Did the...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: Supplementary Report of Scoping Inquiry into CervicalCheck Programme: Discussion (4 Jul 2019)

Kate O'Connell: People were going on QA visits without having a list of what they were going to do when they got there. Would that be a fair summary?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: Supplementary Report of Scoping Inquiry into CervicalCheck Programme: Discussion (4 Jul 2019)

Kate O'Connell: Do we know what sort of people were going? Were they doctors? Were they people who were rolling about in CervicalCheck?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: Supplementary Report of Scoping Inquiry into CervicalCheck Programme: Discussion (4 Jul 2019)

Kate O'Connell: Was the same expert cytopathologist used for every visit?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: Supplementary Report of Scoping Inquiry into CervicalCheck Programme: Discussion (4 Jul 2019)

Kate O'Connell: Of course. Who else was on the team? Were there people from CervicalCheck on it?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: Supplementary Report of Scoping Inquiry into CervicalCheck Programme: Discussion (4 Jul 2019)

Kate O'Connell: Can we have their names?

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Health: Supplementary Report of Scoping Inquiry into CervicalCheck Programme: Discussion (4 Jul 2019)

Kate O'Connell: I want to know how many visits were made by this team and who was on the team. Where was the expert cytopathologist from? Was there a tendering process for an expert? Maybe they got the expert in the place where they keep people like Dr. Scally. Were there clinical people and doctors on the team? I would have assumed that GPs, as the people actually doing the smears, were represented on...