The Government has decided to appeal the High Court judgment in the Ruth Morrissey case arising out of the CervicalCheck scandal. I am conscious that on 11 May the Taoiseach said: "What we propose to do is to offer mediation in every case so women can avoid having to go to court and the trauma of a court hearing." He was asked then if the US lab at the centre of the scandal refused and wanted to fight the case, and he said: "... in this situation ... the State will settle and pursue the lab later". It is very clear the Taoiseach made that commitment. However, it is not being honoured in the context of the Government deciding to appeal this case to the Supreme Court, notwithstanding any mechanism that may be developed, and we are unclear about those, but also in the context of a tribunal that has been established, which is adversarial in itself and which some people are criticising as being one that will be akin to a court session in private as opposed to one in public. Essentially, does the Taoiseach accept that he should not have made a promise, does he apologise for making the promise, or does he intend to make good the promise and pay Ruth Morrissey the award while the appeal to the Supreme Court goes ahead and then fight the lab afterwards? Is that what the Government intends to do, to fight the lab afterwards, having paid out the award?

The Deputy will appreciate that I do not want to discuss individual cases here in the Chamber. There are discussions ongoing between representatives of the State and representatives of Ms Morrissey with regard to exactly that matter but those discussions should happen not here but with her and her representatives.

But the Taoiseach made a promise.

I did a year ago. I admitted before that I believed a year ago that it would be possible to settle all of these cases by mediation and negotiation. Many cases have been settled by mediation and negotiation but it has not been possible to settle all cases, precisely because in some cases the facts are disputed and the issue of negligence is disputed, and I was wrong at the time. I did not understand at the time that there would be situations whereby the facts would be disputed and the whole issue of negligence would be disputed-----

Surely the Taoiseach must have understood that.

-----but we have come up with an alternative recommended by Mr. Justice Meenan, and that is the tribunal. The legislation was approved by Cabinet today and will be published, if not today, in the coming days. That provides an alternative to court. We are not going to take the right away from anyone to go to court but this does provide an alternative.

The Taoiseach said he would pay the people and then pursue the lab.

In addition to that, the Cabinet today approved the sum with respect to the ex gratia scheme and that amount will be disclosed to the 221+ group today.