Clinics offering faulty implants ‘not accountable’

Private clinics which offered PIP breast implants in Ireland “can do what they want” because they are not regulated, the country’s medicines watchdog has said.

Official figures show about 1,500 women were given the potentially faulty implants at the Harley Medical Group in Dublin, the Clane Hospital in Co Kildare and the Shandon St Hospital in Cork.

An Oireachtas hearing into the scandal was told many more Irish women may have travelled overseas to get the now banned implants.