Róisín Garvey (Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for his response. He stated we were reaching the targets, yet I have evidence to show that, in the case of a woman who had an initial test in November and was told in December that she had abnormalities, it was not until last week, five months later and following my intervention, that she found out she will be okay. Despite what the Minister of State is being told, we are not meeting the targets.

There is no problem with getting the initial cervical smear done, thanks to brilliant CervicalCheck services and GPs around the country doing a great job. The first part is no problem but, unfortunately, while there is good uptake, all of those women must then wait on results. As I said, 12,000 women have a diagnosis of irregular cells every year. While most of those cases do not involve cancer, women cannot help but worry. When a woman is told she has irregular cells she cannot remove that knowledge or the worry about the possibility that these cells are cancerous.

As the Minister of State said, early intervention is key. It is very important that we give women the confidence to go ahead and start the experience. They are afraid to start in case they find out something negative and must wait in worry for six months. We need to build up confidence in cervical smear checks. I understand that we have had Covid and so on but it is now 2022. We need to make a conscious effort to let people know we are on our game and that this is being done properly and we are meeting our targets, so that people like me do not have to intervene on behalf of individuals to get test results off a desk because someone has gone on leave.