I welcome the establishment at the weekend of the patient support and advocacy group for women affected by the CervicalCheck scandal, 221+. I echo the calls for accountability among managers in the health service for errors that have been made, but that should also be extended to accountability among the political class for the error made in the first instance by outsourcing this vital aspect of women's healthcare.

Over the weekend, there were newspaper reports that the new plan to extend the CervicalCheck contract involved taking back into the public service cytologists from MedLab and doubling the fees payable to Quest Diagnostics. I would like to know the Taoiseach's opinion on this matter. It is an acknowledgement of the failure of outsourcing and privatisation that the Government would take the extraordinary move of taking back into the public service scientists from private labs. Is this the beginning of the end for outsourcing? Are we going to move to repatriate the service in the long run? That is what is required. It means we will have to train adequate numbers of cytologists and invest in public laboratories.

What is happening behind the scenes in terms of indemnifying these laboratories? Is there an agreement similar to the Woods deal being worked on in the background that would allow laboratories that have made mistakes with women's health in the past to get away scot free if claims are made against them in future? This question needs to be answered.

There is a further question on open disclosure. Much has been said in this Parliament about the need for open disclosure. As an elected representative, I have asked not once, twice, three or even four times, but many times, both orally and in writing, for the answer to a simple question, namely, from which labs the 221 failed tests came, but I have not been given one. I am getting a lot of gobbledygook and waffle, but I am not getting an answer. I now know, having seen the evidence, that the answer to this simple question is available. It can be given over. Why is it being consistently blocked?

I have asked the Taoiseach a number of questions. Is there an acknowledgement by the State that outsourcing was at the heart of this tragedy and that, by bringing cytologists back into the public service, we will begin the process of repatriating the service? Why are we doubling the fees to Quest Diagnostics when outsourcing happened in the first instance because it was supposed to save the State 30% of the cost? This is a large and ironic twist in the debacle. Serious questions need to be answered.

I join Deputy Bríd Smith in welcoming the establishment of 221+, the new support group for the women and families affected by CervicalCheck.

As Members will know, that is being supported and funded by the Department of Health.

The decision on outsourcing was made by a previous Government more than ten years ago, so I have no political axe to grind in defending it or any interest in that regard. It was made before the party I lead came to office. It is important, however, to have regard to Dr. Scally's report. We asked him to study this matter and report to us. He found that the laboratories, namely, the Coombe, the private laboratories in Ireland and the private laboratories in the US, were all up to standard and that there was not a significant difference in the quality of those laboratories. That may not fit in with the Deputy's particular ideology but, regardless of anyone's ideology, that is what he found, that the laboratories, whether Irish or American, whether private or public, were all up to standard and up to scratch.

It is also important to remember what Dr. Scally stated in his report. He pointed out that if one provides cervical screening for 1,000 women, 20 will have cancer or pre-cancer, screening will pick up 15 of those, it will miss five, and those five are the false negatives, but all false negatives are not negligent. In fact, most false negatives are not negligent. False negatives are part and parcel of screening. They are a known limitation of screening, so the fact, or non-fact, that there may be more false negatives in one laboratory or another cannot be seen to be a sign of higher levels of negligence in one laboratory over another. It is important for those of us who are interested in the facts and the truth about this issue that we understand that and that we do not spin or twist these things to suit our own narrative. False negatives, by the way, occur in all laboratories. There is no laboratory that did not have false negatives and there is no laboratory that will not have some degree, unfortunately, of medical error or negligence, whether Irish or American, or whether public or private.

Discussions are ongoing with the laboratories as to how we can continue the cervical screening process. We all want cervical screening to continue. The one way to ensure that lives will be lost is if screening does not continue because we know that screening has saved lives and that the incidence of cervical cancer has been going down in Ireland for the past few years because of the HPV vaccine and screening. We want to make sure that screening continues.

What will not happen and what is not being considered is any sort of retrospective liability or the State covering retrospective liability. That is not something that is under consideration at all. Most of the services are already back in Ireland. MedLab and the Coombe are in Ireland, so most of the services are already in Ireland. It is my view and that of the Minister for Health that when we go to procurement for the new HPV-based test, we will want to make sure the laboratories are of the highest quality and standard.

We have been given the same answer again. The Taoiseach's answer did not address my question. I asked him specifically about public service contracts being offered to cytologists in MedLab. Is that an indicator the Government is serious about taking the service back into public control? If MedLab and all the other laboratories were entirely up to scratch, why is the Taoiseach offering public service contracts? If it is not true, please say it is not true.

Another issue is the degree of error. Yes, all false negatives happen but the degree of error is so serious that some of these laboratories have paid out significant sums of money to the women involved. We know that. We also know that Dr. Scally, by his own admission, was not charged with investigating the 221 very grave errors that were made. I still have not had an answer to the question I asked regarding from which laboratories they came. I am not asking that question to suit my ideology. That is a disgraceful claim to make against me. It does matter which laboratories these tests went to and the outcome of outsourcing. There would be an indicator in the answer to my question, if ever I can get one. An open disclosure to a Deputy would be welcome.

I am not in a position to discuss contracts that are under negotiation or contracts that are not signed. The backdrop to what is happening, however, is that there are laboratories now which no longer want to be involved in providing tests to Irish patients in the Irish health service because of the situation we have had in Ireland, because of litigation and other matters. It should be a matter of concern to all of us that there are laboratories, and it may even happen in other areas of healthcare, where international companies, and even Irish-based private companies, no longer want work from the Irish health service because of the current environment.

That is because they put profit before health.

We should all bear in mind our responsibilities in that regard, if we are genuinely concerned about and interested in protecting women's health. There is a risk in the rise in litigation and how it can impact on health services and quality. I again want to point to the facts for the Deputy because they do matter. Deputy Bríd Smith is making an assumption that the 221 false negatives were all negligent, but they were not. We are going to have to devise a system to determine where negligence occurred and where it did not.

To know whether they were negligent, one must know from where they came.