Catherine Martin (Dublin Rathdown, Green Party)
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433. To ask the Minister for Health the status of the review of 335 positive BRCA results that were processed at Our Lady's Children's Hospital, Crumlin; his plans to review the 3,500 negative results; the timeline for same; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [4313/19]

Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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This issue was first raised in the House in November last year. At that time officials of my Department contacted the Health Service Executive (HSE). The HSE advised that in late October 2018, an error was discovered in correctly communicating a genetic test result by the Department of Clinical Genetics at Our Lady's Children’s Hospital Crumlin (OLCHC) following an enquiry by an oncologist for a patient with recurring cancer who had a genetic test, known as a BRCA test, in 2009. Crumlin Hospital commenced reviewing this incident as a matter of the utmost priority.

This error has been reported as an incident and is being managed in accordance with the HSE Incident and Risk Management policy, including in commencing an incident review process of this transcription error in correctly communicating the test result in a letter to the referring clinician. Direct contact was made with the patient involved in this incident, with an offer made for an Open Disclosure meeting to take place at the discretion of the patient.

As a precaution, OLCHC also instigated a review of the communication of all BRCA test results since 2006, firstly prioritising the 335 positive BRCA results processed by the Department of Clinical Genetics. I understand that the review carried out in Q4 2018 has concluded but as this is a service matter I have asked the HSE to respond directly to the Deputy on this issue.

For the sake of clarity, I would also like to stress to the House that there is no concern regarding the accuracy of the BRCA test itself. The error which has occurred relates to the correct communication of the test result.