Results 21-40 of 96 for cervical speaker:Leo Varadkar

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (24 Oct 2018)

Leo Varadkar: First, I offer my condolences once again to the family and friends of Ms Emma Mhic Mhathúna at what is a difficult time for them, and also to the families of other women who lost their lives to cervical cancer. I assure everyone in this House that Government is deeply committed to ensuring cervical screening continues and provides Irish women with a high-quality service in which they...

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (24 Oct 2018)

Leo Varadkar: I may be a little out of date and out of practice, but the last time I checked the best scientific evidence was that extending cervical screening to women under the age of 25 would not be beneficial. In regard to screening, one must always bear in mind the whole problem of false negatives, with which people are now familiar and which can cause false reassurance. False positives can also be...

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (16 Oct 2018)

Leo Varadkar: I join Deputy Bríd Smith in welcoming the establishment of 221 Plus, the new support group for the women and families affected by CervicalCheck. As Members will know, that is being supported and funded by the Department of Health. The decision on outsourcing was made by a previous Government more than ten years ago, so I have no political axe to grind in defending it or any interest in...

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (10 Oct 2018)

Leo Varadkar: ..., she was very understanding of the efforts we were making to put things right. I hope that something good will come of this tragedy. I hope that we can, to the greatest extent possible, eliminate cervical cancer in Ireland by extending the HPV vaccine to boys and improving our screening system while also building a health service which is more open, honest and respectful of patients....

Leaders' Questions (11 Jul 2018)

Leo Varadkar: ...the slides will commence. I anticipate, however, that it will commence very soon. The scoping and preliminary work done by the Royal College of Surgeons and the British Society for Colposcopy and Cervical Pathology make certain suggestions - for example, that women should be asked for consent. Things were not done properly in the past and we need to do them properly in the future. In...

Leaders' Questions (11 Jul 2018)

Leo Varadkar: I want to say again how distraught I am, and the country is, that so many women have had to endure the uncertainty and worry that have accompanied the CervicalCheck controversy, on which the Government has focused significantly in recent weeks and months. This has been a difficult issue to deal with. Like the women concerned, Deputy McDonald and everyone else, we did not have all the facts...

Questions on Promised Legislation (13 Jun 2018)

Leo Varadkar: However, it is important to bear in mind that there is a separate piece of work being done by the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists and the British Society for Colposcopy and Cervical Pathology. They are looking at every individual smear test, each slide of the women affected, to try to determine where abnormalities were missed and whether they were abnormalities that should...

Leaders' Questions (13 Jun 2018)

Leo Varadkar: ...and emotive issue and has caused concern throughout the country, not just among people who have been affected and their families, but among women in general, and women, in particular, who avail of cervical screening. I believe the Government has taken a lot actions in a swift manner. We established a serious incident management team to go into CervicalCheck and deal with the issues...

Leaders' Questions (Resumed) (12 Jun 2018)

Leo Varadkar: ...consultations with their GPs and repeat smear tests if warranted. We have appointed a team from the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists and the British Society for Colposcopy and Cervical Pathology which is going to go through all of the slides again to see what anomalies were missed-----

Ceisteanna - Questions: Taoiseach's Meetings and Engagements (22 May 2018)

Leo Varadkar: ...and focus remains on getting to the truth of what happened through the Scally inquiry, ensuring that women who have been affected are contacted and engaged, rebuilding confidence in the life-saving CervicalCheck screening programme and carrying out individual case reviews of all 209 women who formed part of the audit to assess their smear tests and determine the impact that the alternative...

Leaders' Questions (15 May 2018)

Leo Varadkar: I do not know anything about the details of that specific case, so it would be improper for me to comment on it. It relates, obviously, to a vaccine rather than the issue of cervical cancer screening, but I appreciate it is part of the bigger issue of how we deal with medical harm and medical negligence. The last time I studied that topic and got a briefing on it, my understanding was...

Leaders' Questions (8 May 2018)

Leo Varadkar: I again want to put on the record that we have no evidence that our cervical screening programme is below international standards in any way. We do not have any reason to believe that our cervical screening programme is any less accurate or is poorer that any cervical screening programme, but it does have limitations. Let us not forget that in the past ten years, 50,000 women have had...

Leaders' Questions (8 May 2018)

Leo Varadkar: First, in regard to CervicalCheck, a daily report and update is being provided by CervicalCheck on its website. That comes out at about 5 p.m. every day. If the Deputy goes to the CervicalCheck website, he will see it gives detailed guidance for GPs and smear takers as to what is happening and it gives them advice and guidance as to how they should communicate with patients who come to see...

Leaders' Questions (8 May 2018)

Leo Varadkar: ...women who were not told this important information about their health. We also will need to look at the various different cases, of which there are approximately 166, of women who were diagnosed with cervical cancer where it subsequently turned out they had been given a false negative smear. We will need to examine that in some detail because there are different forms of false negative,...

Leaders' Questions (2 May 2018)

Leo Varadkar: In Ireland we have an 80% take-up rate of cervical screening. I really hope Deputy Mary Lou McDonald is correct and that this figure will not go down. I am, however, concerned that it will and that lives may be lost as a result. It is important that we get across the message again and again that cervical screening saves lives. In the past ten years there were some 50,000 anomalies...

Leaders' Questions (2 May 2018)

Leo Varadkar: ..., unfortunately, is that cock ups are more common than conspiracies and incompetence more common than collusion. Nonetheless, we need to restore confidence in cancer screening in Ireland and in CervicalCheck. As a result of this, there will be a statutory inquiry. We are inviting the spokespeople to meet this evening following the committee hearing this afternoon to discuss what form...

Leaders' Questions (2 May 2018)

Leo Varadkar: ...very vulnerable today. As a Taoiseach, as a doctor, and as a brother of two sisters, I want to say a few things. First, this controversy relates to women who were already diagnosed with cervical cancer and are receiving treatment. There are many women in the country at the moment who are worried that they might have cancer and worried that the HSE and CervicalCheck know that and have...

Leaders' Questions (1 May 2018)

Leo Varadkar: To clarify, in all 1,400 cases the original smears have been rechecked. The way the audit worked is that if a woman was diagnosed with cervical cancer between 2008 and 2014, they went back and checked all of the smear tests to see if there were false negatives or false positives. To reassure people, in all 1,400 cases those smear tests were rechecked already. That is the way this audit...

Leaders' Questions (1 May 2018)

Leo Varadkar: I was asked about audits. Since 2008, 3 million smear tests have been carried out by CervicalCheck. I do not believe it would be practical to repeat 3 million tests or recheck them and that may well not be warranted. The HSE has advised, however, that between 2008 and early 2018, 1,482 cervical cancer cases had been notified to CervicalCheck by the national cancer registry. The majority of...

Leaders' Questions (1 May 2018)

Leo Varadkar: ...clinical audit; therefore, on any given day there are hundreds or perhaps even thousands of audits being carried out across the health service. There may well have been other audits carried out of cervical checks.