The Workers’ Party have called for the remit of the cervical cancer enquiry to include the appropriateness of cost being used as a criteria for choosing screening labs.

Cllr. Ted Tynan, Workers’ Party representative on Cork City Council, said:
“Outsourcing as a practice has already run down our waste management services, our public transport system and much more. Now, it is clear that it has cost lives.

“The entire motivation for outsourcing is to ‘save costs.’ The government propaganda would have us believe that these ‘savings’ are to be found by reducing waste. But in reality, what it means is that we get shoddy services. And they have cost lives.”

Cllr. Tynan continued:
“There ought to be no profit motivation in healthcare provision – or, for that matter, in housing or education. It is irony heaped upon irony that the helplline being used by women to access information about new screenings, is itself outsourced to a for-profit company. When will we learn?

“But by gradually parcelling off our healthcare system – some to United States labs, some to private providers here at home – we are ensuring that the most basic decisions about our healthcare are being made, not on the basis of people’s health, but on the basis of greed and profit.”

The Workers’ Party councillor concluded:
“I am calling on Mr. Scally, as chair of the Inquiry, to ensure that the inquiry includes an assessment of why cost was ever a consideration in choosing how to process cervical screening results.

“The privatisation of healthcare must be tackled in its totality if we are to prevent other disasters similar to this one. Anything else would simply be saving face, without substantively addressing the problem.”