I have just come from a rather extraordinary meeting of the Committee of Public Accounts where we were joined by representatives of the Health Service Executive, CervicalCheck and the State Claims Agency to discuss contradictions in evidence. Those contradictions have not been cleared up. The evidence given to us leads me to one of two conclusions. Either the Minister is not being told everything or is being misled or else he is simply not on top of this matter. It could be one or the other. The Government must immediately find out what is going on.

CervicalCheck is run out of Limerick and I have spoken to the people who work there. They are good people. I am sure there are issues at a management level but the ordinary workers are good people. Dr. Scally has never set foot in the place and has not met those workers. The head of the HSE met them once and has now acknowledged that he must meet them more often. Dr. Scally has never spoken to the man who is over CervicalCheck. This is the biggest healthcare crisis in this country in decades, but after this length of time he has not sat down with the director of the programme. How is that acceptable?

I do not have a great deal of time for Dr. Scally's report but he was very clear that the provision of documentation was not acceptable. Does the Minister know what we found out in the past hour? The head of CervicalCheck offered full remote and electronic access to the programme's records but the head of the HSE, who was sitting beside the programme director, had never heard of that offer. He thanked him for the offer and said he would take it up. What is going on? All of this information is available but we are four weeks on and Dr. Scally has received a dump of information that is not readable or searchable. Nevertheless, the head of CervicalCheck, whom Dr. Scally has never met, offered electronic access to all this information through the HSE but it was turned down. Some people might say "cover-up" but I wonder what is going on.

Will the Minister and his Government instruct Dr. Scally to visit Limerick and the programme manager immediately? Will the Minister for Health visit Limerick and the programme manager immediately? We now know there will be more than 209 women affected so will the Minister outline to the House the likely number of cases? Will he guarantee in this House that the Scally report will come back in time and the Dáil will be recalled at the end of August to discuss it and commence the commission of investigation? Without a Dáil sitting, it cannot begin. The Taoiseach has given much detail and many commitments in saying there will be no further court cases, but what work has been done by the Taoiseach and this Government with the State Claims Agency to ensure this? I am not seeing it.

I reiterate the point that the Government acted very swiftly to address what is an appalling issue. We have worked hard with the affected women to get them immediate support and ensure they can have access to professional services to advise them. We have brought in outside experts and not relied on internal experts. We have brought in UK gynaecology services for advice and each person is being treated respectfully.

The State Claims Agency has indicated it will work with those who make claims and seek to facilitate mediation wherever it occurs. Of course, there is another party involved, namely, the testing services. The State Claims Agency represents the State and that has implications. It is very clear that the approach being taken is one of supporting those women and minimising the trauma in pursuing a case if that is what they seek.

The Houses sought an independent outside expert and we did not seek to appoint someone perceived as somebody already within the system. We sought somebody from outside with the necessary expertise. For the Deputy to suggest that this person should have already met a range of individuals-----

Surely the person who runs the programme-----

It is up to Dr. Scally to order his own work. We have provided terms of reference for him. There has already been an interim report and in my experience - I am a long time around this House - it is not often we have an independent expert appointed to do an investigation of this nature who has come back within weeks with very concrete proposals that will support the affected women with financial support and provide guarantees on consent forms. They will be provided with far more information than they have been getting. It demonstrates that Dr. Scally is reviewing processes. Of course, in ordering his work he will meet all those whom he needs to meet.

Dr. Scally spoke about the difficulty he has experienced getting the records he needed promptly and in a readable format. I understand the HSE has stated it provided as much as was available in an electronic format-----

That has been proven to be wrong.

It is working to ensure the other documents will be searchable for Dr. Scally. We have assured Dr. Scally that he will have the support of all agencies of Government in getting access to the records he needs. It would be inappropriate for us to be issuing instructions to someone when we have decided for him to come here to do an independent scoping report. If we did so, the Deputy would be back here, rightly, saying that the Minister was interfering with the independent work of somebody appointed to investigate this matter. It is exactly what would happen.

The Minister has refused to answer my questions. I asked very specific questions but he has not answered them. I will say it straight that if the Government does not deal with this matter soon, the lifetime of this Dáil will be shortened considerably. This is a scandal and the Government is not on top of it in any way, shape or form. Members of this House have more knowledge of some of these matters than members of the Government who are responsible for this.

The decision of the Dáil was to give Dr. Scally this inquiry and that he would report by the end of June. That has unilaterally been changed by the Government and not the Dáil. We really need something that is scoped, with key decisions and terms of reference needed by a commission of inquiry. What is being outlined here will go on for an inordinate amount of time and, unfortunately, women will pass away while that is happening. They want answers and guidance. They want to know the facts. This will not come back by the end of August. It will hardly come back by the end of this year if it continues going this way. It has gone beyond what was the idea of this Dáil. I can see that. Women will need to tell their stories but first they need the facts to come out. It is not what will happen. I ask the Minister, who has refused to answer my questions, to go back to the Minister for Health and put my questions to him.

If the Deputy comes in and wants to change from week to week the instructions issued to Dr. Scally, who is conducting an independent inquiry-----

It was supposed to be finished at the end of June.

-----we will never have proper responses as the Deputy will want to change from week to week what he is seeking.

Rubbish.

We have provided Dr. Scally with resources to investigate this.

And timelines.

We know there are parallel discussions going on in the House, as they should. We cannot come back seeking to instruct Dr. Scally in a different way every week. The Deputy asked if there are cases other than the 209 we know of. I do not have that information available to me. Part of the response was to examine cases that did not come to the attention of CervicalCheck and have an audit.

There were, as I recollect, 3,000 such cases. A process was being put in place to identify whether there were additional cases that would have emerged from those. I am sure that process is ongoing and that the Deputy can get information in the usual way from the responsible Minister to find out how that approach is developing.