Minister for Health Simon Harris has said he does not have confidence in the management of the CervicalCheck programme.
Speaking in Dublin this morning, Mr Harris said he was fully supportive of the programme but could not say the same for its leadership.
Mr Harris said the programme has reduced the rates of cervical cancer.
Asked if he has confidence in the management of the programme, the Minister replied: “Truthfully I can’t say I do.”
Meanwhile, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said he did not want to condemn any individual and would wait until he knew the full facts.
The clinical director of CervicalCheck Gráinne Flannelly has said she cannot say for sure that all of the more than 200 women who missed early treatment for cervical cancer have been made aware of the situation.
According to the Health Service Executive, 206 cytology reviews suggested “a different result that would have recommended an investigation to occur at an earlier stage”.
Questioned on RTÉ Radio One's Morning Ireland programme on Friday, Dr Flannelly said: "My sense is that all the patients have been told...I can't tell you for sure that the 206 patients are aware."
Dr Flannelly also issued an apology to Vicky Phelan, the mother of two from Co Limerick, who was given incorrect cancer test results and is now terminally ill.
Ms Phelan settled a High Court action for €2.5 million earlier this week against a US laboratory over a 2011 smear test, which wrongly gave a negative result for cancer.
She was diagnosed with cancer in 2014 and only told of the false negative in the smear test in September 2017.
Dr Flannelly said she was sorry about the length of time it took to communicate with Ms Phelan and that she did not have opportunity to have her cancer treated earlier.
A total of 206 women diagnosed with cervical cancer should have received earlier intervention than they actually did, reviews carried out by the State’s national screening programme for the condition have suggested.
Meanwhile, Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs Simon Coveney has appealed to women to continue to believe in the cervical check system, saying some 250,000 women each year had smear tests under it and each year cervical cancer was down 7 per cent as a result.
“I do want to appeal to people to continue to believe in that system, “ Mr Coveney said.
He was speaking on Radio Kerry during a visit to Killarney to celebrate the Liebehrr family and a 18 million euro refurbishment of the Dunloe Castle Hotel as part of their 60 year commitment to Killarney where they employ well over 1,000 people in engineering, manufacturing and hotels.
Mr Coveney said Vicky Phelan was an extraordinary person in highlighting through very tragic personal circumstances for her and her family a flaw in the cervical check system.
The policy changed in 2016 and an audit system introduced . There is an audit system to check previous smear test history. Doctors will now be required to pass information onto patients , and patients will automatically receive the information, Mr Coveney said.
Both the Department of Health and the HSE were looking into decision making process around what happened in the case of Ms Phelan, he also said.
“There are 250,00 women every year who have smear tests as part of the Cervical Check System. That system has been very, very successful in terms of reducing the rates of cervical cancer in Ireland which is down is down 7 per cent every year since that checking system was introduced.
I do want to believe in people to continue to believe in that system.
“Where there was a significant flaw here which is now being changed is that if a woman subsequently is diagnosed with cervical cancer, then there is an automatic check to see whether that person had had a smear test before that and why something wasn’t shown up. It’s in that audit system that unfortunately for Vicky Phelan a negative smear test was discovered but she wasn’t told about that and she should have been.”
Separately, the former Master of the Rotunda Prof Sam Coulter-Smith has questioned the wisdom of moving cytology testing of smear tests from Ireland to overseas.
He told Newstalk Breakfast when the decision was made 10 years ago to move analysis of cytology to America, he went to see Minister of Health at time to express his concern.
“We had a fully accredited, very high quality cytology screening system in Ireland, the decision was made to move to the States,” he said.
“We had concerns about quality assurance, around different language description of smears. The result was we had a situation where when there were difficulties with smears there were multi-disciplinary meetings, which were transatlantic, across time zones, video conferencing, language issues in the way in which things are described in different countries.
“That goes some way in explaining why we are where we are.”
Prof Coulter-Smith said the chances of what happened to Ms Phelan would have been smaller if the testing had remained in Ireland.
“These things do happen from time to time, they should be isolated incidents,” he said.
“The communication and notification of patients, you have to hold your hands up and say there was an error here.”
Minister of State at the Department of Health Catherine Byrne told the same programme that “where smear tests go for testing” would be examined.
“Everything will be on the table. Women’s lives are at risk. There is no way they should have to go through this, ” she said.
She said even one misdiagnosis was too high.
“That’s what this review will be about. Why are these numbers are so high?”
Ms Byrne said an investigation would have to determine what is best practice and what procedures should be followed.
When asked if the State has failed Irish women, Ms Byrne replied: “I’d like to say we haven’t failed women, but we failed Vicky Phelan.
“On the other hand a lot of lives have been saved by this service.
“With a proper service and proper procedures more lives will be saved.”