Gerard Craughwell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

We just heard about the system. It is protected under the guise of a thing called the Carltona doctrine which allows public servants hide behind the Ministers. This morning's interview with Emma Mhic Mathúna was heartbreaking. Here was a young woman who did everything right, gave up her job to be a stay at home mother, raised her children and breastfed them when they were babies. She could not be a more perfect woman in my view. There is the absolute irony of Tony O’Brien, the current head of the HSE, walking out of his job with his pension in his pocket to take up a €65,000 a year job with Evofem Biosciences in San Diego. Its website shows it "is dedicated to developing a portfolio of innovative therapeutic solutions to meet the evolving sexual and reproductive health needs of millions of women globally". What sort of a bloody irony is that? The man who presided over the CervicalCheck scandal in this country is going to a company that claims this. According to the Evofem website it is "science with a soul" providing "innovative healthcare solutions" that "elevate the lives of women". They develop "woman-controlled, easy-to-use and accessible products. Because when a woman is in complete control today, she is in greater control of tomorrow." What sort of a company would employ a man who has just presided over this disaster?

I am sure all the bloody words we say in here are worth nothing to the 200-odd women who today are not sure of their future and to that poor woman who spoke this morning. It is all hot air because nobody is accountable. Nobody ever is accountable in this country. We walk away. If there is any sign that somebody is going to become accountable we give them their pension and ask them to leave and they sail off into the sunset. Goddammit this has been going on since the scandals that led to the economic crash. That was only money. Now we are talking about lives.

Somebody in the HSE knew and sat on that information and denied it those women. If it was my wife, my daughter or my sister, I would be down there with a gun today looking for them. I cannot begin to imagine the pain and suffering that has been caused. I meet ordinary women in the street, good friends of mine who have had a clear diagnosis and tests and they are happy but they went through hell worrying anyway. I said it last week. I am at the age where I get a bowel screen every couple of years. I am wondering should I trust that. For some peculiar reason it seems the women in this country always get caught in these disasters. That is what they are. I do not know that a debate will do anything here. I would love a Minister to come in here and lay out who got the message first. What is his or her name? Who did he or she pass that message to? What was the line of communication that brought that to the Minister for Health, Deputy Harris, a few minutes before he walked into the Dáil? Give us the names of those people and tell us how they are going to be held accountable. Dammit to hell it is the very least the citizens of this country deserve and maybe if we do that, we will finish up in the situation that no public servant will ever again hide information.

I apologise to the women of Ireland for adding more bloody hot air to the concerns they have because that is all that is coming out of Leinster House at the moment.