Rose Conway Walsh (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Leader for responding to my request to bring the Minister before the House tomorrow, and we look forward to a full debate with him. Normally, when a Minister comes before the House, we say we will confine our comments to when he or she is here. However, we see this absolute scandal unfolding all the time, and I have no doubt but that by the time the Minister comes in tomorrow afternoon, there will be new questions following his appearance in the Dáil today, the HSE's appearance before the health committee and so on.

As the cervical cancer smear test scandal escalates, it is now clear this has been a monumental, systemic cover-up. I called it a cover-up yesterday. The Minister called it a miscommunication or an error in communication. What an insult to women all over this country. We now know that at least 17 women have died and hundreds more are fighting serious battles for their health and their lives. The truth is that we do not know the full scale of this yet. We have been given misinformation after misinformation. We need to know the full scale of this. This is why Sinn Féin is calling for the immediate publication of all information surrounding the audit, the serious incident management team and the communications pathways. They must be published immediately. If we are to be transparent about this, this information must come into the public domain. I therefore call on the Minister to instruct that that information be published in the coming hours.

As the numbers affected continue to rise, Tony O'Brien has serious questions to answer. Yesterday, I said his position was untenable; today, it is even more untenable. He is the one with whom the buck stops. He is the one who has a duty to report to the Minister. It will be very interesting to see the correspondence between Mr. O'Brien and the Minister, including the routine communications. Surely to God people expect the Minister to be alerted to cases such as this. A commission of inquiry must be set up. It must be multifaceted, include the women and the families of the deceased women and have reference to the absolutely disastrous decision that was made in 2008. I want to know exactly how much was saved in this regard. Was it 30 cent in €1, 40 cent in €1, or 50 cent in €1? That decision was made under a Fianna Fáil-Progressive Democrats Government.