Colm Burke (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I join with my colleagues in saying that our thoughts today are with the people who are getting - or have gotten - the news on the results of CervicalCheck. These results were previously inaccurately reported. It is a challenging time for them, their families and for the wider community as well. It is also a challenging time for people working in the health service. The workload in all of the clinics across the country has increased dramatically. I refer to general practitioners and everyone involved in the healthcare area. We should support them. It is also important that we plan for the future.

One of the problems, about which we need to do something, is to provide a huge amount of information and that is lacking. The whole process of the screening programme may, to an extent, have given a false impression that once a person got the result they were guaranteed that it was proof of safety. It now turns out that it was not. The big issue in this case was that smears were taken which clearly identified there was cancer but that was not identified. That is the issue now. There is also the wider issue that none of these health programmes is 100%. We need to get a lot more information out there. I agree with colleagues in that regard.

There is a need for accountability. The person who was in charge of CervicalCheck has stepped aside and another person is no longer in the post they held. They were in charge of the whole CervicalCheck programme. However, much more needs to be done. One of the issues in respect of litigation in the medical area is that the only people who are in the courts are the doctors and nurses. There is no accountability among people in administration who may have delayed the process of getting the claim dealt with. We need far more accountability.

Also on litigation, we need to be mindful that last year something like €300 million was paid out in claims. There was then €300 million less for healthcare. It does not come directly from the healthcare budget, but it comes from the overall budget. If we settled every current claim, it would cost over €2 billion. We need to be mindful that we need to put in adequate resources so we can reduce the level of litigation. When errors occur, it is important that people are adequately compensated. It will never put them back into the position they were in prior to the error being made but it is important that is taken into account as well. We have a major challenge. We need accountability and we need it across all the sectors involved in this case, whether it is the medical or the administration side.