The Minister for Health and Children, Mary Harney has this evening rejected calls for her resignation and instead had called on senior opposition TDs to help with the reform Ireland's cancer services.
During a Dail debate on a No confidence motion in her tabled by the Labour Party Ms Harney said she was bringing about change in the health service.
"I want to be able to look any patient that I meet in Ireland whether in urban areas, or in rural areas and say that we are putting in place a cancer programme that will guarantee that they get the best possible outcome," she said.
During her half-hour address Ms Harney said resolving the issues surrounding cancer care was as important and urgent as "resolving the Northern Ireland problem".
In a strong defence of her position, Ms Harney said she had put patients first in every step she had taken since becoming Minister for Health.
"Quitting is a shortcut to failure and I don't accept failure", she said.
Ms Harney went on to say that she had answered parliamentary questions last Wednesday in good faith and said she was as shocked as anyone else when she heard of Dr Naughten's review of ultrasounds last Thursday at the health committee.
The Minister again apologised to patients in Portlaoise and the nine women whose treatment has been delayed because of the misdiagnosis.
She extended this apology to the women who heard for the first time last Thursday that the ultrasound tests were being reexamined.
During the same debate the Fine Gael TD and spokesman on health said the Minister was "disengaged" and lacked the "appetite for taking responsibility".
"The Minister talks a good game. Yesterday she talked a good game about not going off the pitch and she's done the same thing here again tonight. We expected no less. But if anything has become clear from the past few months, in Portlaoise and elsewhere, it is that talking a good game is not enough and it's no match for ministerial action," he said.
He said the No confidence motion was "made necessary by the extraordinary revelation that 97 women in the midlands had to be recalled after their ultra sound scans were reviewed. Appalling is the only word to describe the plight of these 97 women who heard the news through the media".
Labour Party health spokeswoman Jan O'Sullivan told the Dail tonight that the Minister had to be politically accountable for the way which women facing cancer tests had been treated.
"If political accountability is to mean anything then Minister Harney must accept overall responsibility for the way in which these women were treated", Ms O'Sullivan said.
"Of course she is not responsible for the misdiagnosis. But she set up the system that has become so focused on itself rather than the patient that, incredibly, it ended up telling the Oireachtas health committee before it told the women themselves that they, 97 human beings who had been told they were clear of cancer, had to be recalled and may, after all, have had the disease when they were referred for tests. "
The No confidence vote will be held tomorrow evening.