This is a difficult and emotive issue and has caused concern throughout the country, not just among people who have been affected and their families, but among women in general, and women, in particular, who avail of cervical screening. I believe the Government has taken a lot actions in a swift manner. We established a serious incident management team to go into CervicalCheck and deal with the issues there. We established a scoping inquiry, asked Dr. Scally to do his work, and secured agreement on a cross-party basis for the terms of reference of the inquiry. We secured agreement with doctors to enable women to have a free visit to their GP and a repeat smear test if they felt that was necessary or wanted that done for reassurance. We have appointed a team comprising members of the UK's Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists and the British Society for Colposcopy and Cervical Pathology. This team is going back over all of the old slides and smear tests of the women affected to make sure they are quality assured and to find out if abnormalities were missed and if there were abnormalities that should not have been missed.

We have also put in place a package of practical supports for women and their families, extending from medical cards to access to experimental medicines, assistance with childcare and so on. Delivery of that is still under way, and in each case it is a tailored package. Public health nurses and others have met individually with women and their families to discuss with them what type of supports they want. Because the supports are individual and tailored, it is taking time to put them in place, but that is very much under way. In addition, we have accepted Dr. Scally's recommendation for a payment to be made to women right away to cover some of their expenses arising from dealing with his inquiry. We have also confirmed the Government's decision to move to a more modern form of cervical screening using human papillomavirus, HPV, as the primary test. That was planned anyway, but we are going to press ahead and become one of the first countries in the western world to do it.

Dr. Scally was appointed by the Government to do this work, and the terms of reference were agreed by the Oireachtas. Should it be the case that anyone obstructs the work of Dr. Scally, they will also be obstructing the Government. I want to make it very clear to any agency or public body, if it is not already, that we expect full co-operation with Dr. Scally and his team and will accept nothing less than that. The Minister for Health met Dr. Scally in recent days to assure him that if he runs into any further issues, he has a direct line to the Minister to deal with them. I note from yesterday's statement that while he expressed enormous frustration with the speed at which he received documentation and the format it came in, he said he was broadly content with the interaction he was having.

Regarding the Deputy's suggestion of rolling this into a commission of inquiry, we would have to give that proper consideration. One of the advantages of having a scoping inquiry is that even though it was only set up a few weeks ago, we already have a progress report, an interim report and findings and recommendations related to one of the terms of reference. Those recommendations are in the process of being implemented. While it is intended to have a commission of investigation once Dr. Scally has finished his work, it is important to bear in mind the consequences of such a commission. If we had set up a commission of investigation set up, we would not have had that progress. We would probably find that the investigation would run much more slowly and that, because of the statutory nature, everyone would have a lawyer. We have found on a number of occasions that it takes months to set commissions of inquiry up and a year or two years before they complete their work and produce findings and recommendations. The point of the Scally inquiry was to have initial an scoping inquiry to quickly find out as much as we could and do as much as we could before a commission was set up, because that will probably take more than a year if not two or three, as they always do. Many women, unfortunately and sadly, do not have that time.

Before I call Deputy Martin, I wish to point out to leaders that Standing Orders set out that there is a definite time allowed for all these items.

There is also a time at which to be here.

Yesterday, we exceeded the allocated time in every section. I implore leaders please to lead by showing respect for Standing Orders.

I thought it would take me a minute to give the expression of sympathy at the beginning, which I did not get. However, I take the Ceann Comhairle's point.

The problem is that this process will take much longer. I am curious that the Taoiseach used the phrase ,"while it is intended", in respect of setting up a commission of investigation. Is he committed to setting up such a commission or not? We need to know. Dr. Scally's report states one may be established, whereas the foreword refers to his work as a scoping inquiry prior to the establishment of a commission of investigation.

I have great time for Dr. Scally. I do not know the man, but he is working earnestly and so on. However, a statutory inquiry provides teeth. There is a pattern here. The Taoiseach's own Minister did not know what was going on about this issue because he had not been told. The Committee of Public Accounts had to drag fairly basic documentation out of the Department and the HSE. Officials had been discussing this for two years, yet information could not be made available to the Oireachtas or the Minister until the committee forced it out of them. We now have 4,000 documents that were sent over two days in an unsearchable format. Does that not ring alarm bells? We need to consider - and I ask the Taoiseach to consider this - whether it would be more effective to roll it into a statutory commission, rather than waiting for until November or December to get to the end of this inquiry and moving on to a commission of investigation.

Yes, we are committed to establishing a commission of investigation. I do not want there to be any ambiguity about that. Members have a lot of faith in Dr. Scally. He has done a good job so far and many of the women with whom he has been in contact have a lot of faith in him. He has asked that he be allowed more time to conduct his scoping inquiry. It is appropriate that we allow him that time, particularly because he wants to engage individually with more of the women affected and their families. Of course that is going to take a bit of time. I have not spoken to him personally, but Dr. Scally has said to the Government that he believes that he can finish this work by the end of the summer. We should allow him to do that. This is a scoping inquiry, which will get to a lot of the facts and make a lot of recommendations, which we can then implement immediately. We will then move on to the commission of investigation. Even if we were now to decide to fold the work into a commission of investigation, we would still need a scoping exercise anyway. That has been necessary in the past. The best way we can get answers, results, recommendations and action quickly is to allow Dr. Scally to do what he has been asked to do by the end of the summer and allow him to produce his recommendations along the way, which he is doing. My apologies for going over time again.