Victims of the CervicalCheck scandal are pleading for other women to be spared the ordeal that a terminally-ill cancer patient was put through, to win her landmark compensation case.

Terminally ill Ruth Morrissey may have won her landmark High Court action and been awarded a total of €2.1m against the HSE and two US laboratories over the testing of her CervicalCheck smear slides, but there was little to celebrate as she left the Four Courts.

Mr Justice Kevin Cross said Ruth Morrissey’s life had been ruined and she has suffered a life sentence which she is fully aware is expected to take effect within two years and for which there is no reasonable prospect of a reprieve.

The commotion around a helpline that didn’t work; a distrust of the HSE’s ability to supply reliable data; and a preoccupation with media coverage of the CervicalCheck crisis are themes in a series of revealing texts between the health minister and his most senior adviser (the texts have been obtained through Freedom of Information).

The health authority's national director of screening services, Damien McCallion, said there is currently a backlog of 79,500 slides, with some samples taking up to 33 weeks to be reviewed.

The national director of the HSE’s screening service will be quizzed today about the 33 week wait for the return of cervical screening results.

The Government and Health Minister Simon Harris came under severe attack in the Dáil over fresh delays in cervical tests for women who had to be retested.

It has emerged a medical lab that takes up to seven months to process smear tests for the HSE has been fast-tracking the results for private patients.

Two people who screened the now terminally ill Ruth Morrissey’s smear test for the MedLab laboratory in 2012 which came back as negative have been withdrawn from the witness list in the long-running case.

There was "a missed opportunity" to treat Ruth Morrissey when "on balance" pre cancer was present in 2012 a leading expert has told the High Court.

The two external labs at the heart of the CervicalCheck controversy were paid a total of €12.4m in the past two years for their services.

Brendan Howlin, who was public expenditure minister when Tony O’Brien was appointed head of the HSE, has defended his departure package.

Half of all cervical smears are still being sent to the US for analysis even though a Dublin laboratory has the capacity to process them all in Ireland.

Cervical smears are still being sent for screening to a firm in the US six years after the HSE said the outsourcing would be short term.