Dáil Éireann Debate, Wednesday - 17 February 2021
989. Deputy Alan Kelly asked the Minister for Health if his Department is still retaining the services of a person (details supplied) to oversee work on the recommendations of the Scally report; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [8988/21]
View answerThe Government accepted all 50 recommendations made in Dr Scally’s Scoping Inquiry into the CervicalCheck Programme, which was published on 12 September 2018.
An implementation plan was published in December 2018 on the Department of Health website. The Minister for Health requested Dr Scally to undertake an independent review of the Implementation Plan. The Implementation Plan was revised to take account of further formal observations submitted by Dr Gabriel Scally. A further revision of the Implementation Plan took place to encompass two further recommendations identified by Dr Scally in the Supplementary Report, which was approved in June 2019.
Dr Scally was requested to undertake a further implementation review, and this took place in late 2019. The report of this Review of the Implementation of the Recommendations of the Scoping Inquiry into CervicalCheck was received by the Department in April 2020. The Minister published it on the Department’s website on 21 December 2020. In this review report, Dr Scally says that substantial progress has been made, the vast majority of actions were on track or were completed, and he is satisfied with the approach and structures in place for implementation.
Quarterly progress reports on implementation are published on the Department of Health website since Q1 2019. The Q4 2020 report will be published this week. As of the end of 2020, there were 148 of 170 actions, arising from the 58 recommendations, completed.
The Department of Health engages on an ongoing basis with the HSE and the National Cancer Registry of Ireland as part of the oversight of the implementation of the remaining recommendations and actions. The CervicalCheck Steering Committee, chaired by Professor Anne Scott, will also have a role in oversight of the implementation of the remaining recommendations.
