Free smear tests for all women, announced by the Government in May at the height of the CervicalCheck crisis, are set to cost €10m.
A memo from the Department of the Health to the Public Accounts Committee has outlined the costs associated with the offer of free screening.
It is costing €4.7m to provide women with a free GP consultation and a further €2.36m for repeat smear test consultations. The additional costs of around €3m are for laboratory testing of the smear tests.
Labour TD Kelly said: "During the crisis the minister made the decision, which has had profound consequences, to provide free screening.
"There are now 20 weeks of a delay. This is affecting women's health in a detrimental way. Furthermore, it has been determined that they have no prioritisation mechanism or way of dealing with priorities."
"If a woman has to go back for screening pretty quickly or she is within routine screening and the 20 week delay applies equally to the woman who needs priority screening versus the woman who is going back for her three-year screening."
He said the delays can have detrimental consequences for women as "the Minister or the Department did not have the capacity or put in adequate resources to be able to deal with the excessive demand created by the decision".
In May arrangements were put in place to provide women with a free GP consultation to discuss their concerns about a previous smear test.
The Health Service Executive set a consultation fee of €50 for these visits and almost 95,000 tests have cost around €4.7m to date.
In many of these cases the consultations provided reassurance to the women concerned without the need for another smear test.
Up to mid-November 48,000 payments were made to GPs to carry out repeat smear tests. The GPs are reimbursed €49 per test and this amounts to a total of around €2.36m.
In addition to GP consultations and payment for smear testing there is the cost of processing the smear test samples by contracted laboratories.
The memo stated: "The HSE is now in the process of concluding final contracts and operating arrangements with the laboratories to ensure the continuation of cytology services pending the introduction of HPV testing as the primary screening test.
"While these discussions are ongoing it would not be appropriate to provide overly precise details on laboratory costs but it is possible to indicated to the Committee that the combination of GP consultations and smear testing and laboratory costs for the above activity is like to be well within a total estimate of €10m."
Mr Kelly was critical of the "secrecy" around the HSE's relationship with laboratories and the amount of money they are paid.
Reading from the HSE memo, PAC chairperson Seán Fleming said: "Women who availed of an early, repeat smear test with the CervicalCheck will be called for their next routine test according to their individual screening recommendation. This means that most women screened will be recalled for screening in either three or five years. As a result future costs of providing smear tests will be offset to a degree by this out of cycle smear tests."
He said that at the time women felt they were going to get an extra screening but essentially they are only bringing forward the one that they were due to have. "There is no extra screening being offered here at all."
He said that he was not aware of that subtlety.
But Social Democrats co-leader Catherine Murphy said: "The problem is that it has increased the delay in getting the results. But if somebody is going to be screened, there is an interval between the screening that is appropriate and entirely right. If you had a test today, you are not going to want one in six months' time, it is not going to give you any extra information because the intervals are there for a specific purpose."
