Róisín Garvey (Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for attending. He is great for coming in here and taking the heat but he is the Minister of State with responsibility for public health and well-being so my Commencement matter is relevant to his role as well as that of the Minister for Health.

I want to raise an issue that concerns cervical smear tests. There have been improvements thanks to great pioneers like Vicky Phelan and others but we have some way to go. Several women have contacted me to tell me that they have experienced a huge amount of stress caused by delays in getting results after they had an initial cervical smear test, and they experienced further delay, in cases where there were irregularities, in getting an appointment for a colposcopy procedure or have irregular cells removed and discover the final diagnosis.

A few women have told me that they had to wait over five months. As a woman who has had a cervical smear test and irregular cells were discovered, I know that as soon as one is told irregular cells have been found one automatically thinks cancer, and one continues to think like that until one is told that it is not cancer. So that is a stressful situation.

Every year in Ireland over 12,000 women are diagnosed as having irregular cells following a cervical smear test so that is 1,000 women a month or between 30 and 40 women every day. Therefore, every month 1,000 women must endure this stress until they get a final result. Targets have been set out but I could not find out whether we have reached them. It seems to me that most women still must wait between four and five months before getting the all-clear or find out that they need a further procedure or procedures.

In Ireland, the State provides a test, which is very good. Women should get tested every three years if aged between 25 and 29 years and every five years if aged between 30 and 65 years. There is a national screening programme where 295,000 women annually are screened, which is a much better target than in previous years. Unfortunately, I was unable to find up-to-date figures and cited the figures for 2020.

People still must wait. In some cases, the consultants have the results but if they go on holidays or take a break for a few weeks, which they are entitled to do, the test results sit on their desks and there is nobody in place to convey the test results. A few women have contacted me to tell me that they had waited for weeks and I made representations on their behalf so their results were taken off the desk of the consultant, who had gone on holidays, and brought to light so the women got their results. That is not my job. I should not have to help people to gain access to their medial results. It is the job of the HSE, clinicians and consultants to deliver results to women.

I do not know who is to blame for delays and it probably is not the fault of consultants. A woman told me that the reason for the delay in her case was that her consultant had the results but went on holidays. That poor woman was in bits because she thought she might have cancer and every single day she waited for her results. Partly due to me making inquiries she got her results quicker than she would have if she had not contacted me. Speeding up medical results is not our job as politicians. We make inquiries because we want to take care of constituents although the woman I mentioned was not even from County Clare. There is something radically wrong if people are left in a situation where they lose sleep because their results are on a desk because somebody has gone on holidays. That is not right.

I want to touch on targets and ask a couple of questions that the Minister of State might answer today or follow up. How can long waiting times for such a worrying diagnosis be justified? Let us think of the day-to-day worry that these women have experienced every step of the way. What is the procedure for continuing the CervicalCheck workload for consultants when they go on leave so that test results do not end up sitting on a desk? How many people await screening results? How many people await colposcopy results? Who conducts the tests for the State? Is it private companies? Who does the tests? Is the testing conducted inside or outside the State? If the State is paying can faster turnaround times be demanded?

The HSE and the Government have set target times as follows: the results of smear tests should be four weeks; an appointment for a colposcopy should be eight weeks, which is still a long time; and results for colposcopy should be four weeks. So the waiting time should not be five or six months. Have these targets been met? I ask because I could not find out that information. I look forward to the response of the Minister of State to this worrying issue that affects half of the population.