Top medic's letter raised cancer fears years ago

Fears were raised almost six years ago about the standard of breast cancer care in the Midlands, it emerged today.

A letter sent from a senior medic in April 2002 to then Minister for Health Micheál Martin outlined deficiencies in cancer services at the Midlands Regional Hospital, Portlaoise.

Even though senior heath service official Ann Doherty, who compiled one of three reports into the breast cancer scandal, confirmed it existed, the Department of Health have no record of it.

During an Oireachtas Committee meeting, Minister for Health Mary Harney said civil servants have been unable to find the letter on file.

Fine Gael called for an investigation into the disappearance, claiming if action had been taken in 2002 the Portlaoise cancer scandal could have been avoided.

“If action had been taken then, then these women would not have had to suffer,” the party’s health spokesman Dr James Reilly said.

“I will ask the question, did somebody interfere with the file?

“I do think that an investigation will have to be carried out as to how that went missing from the file.”

The letter from consultant surgeon Peter Naughton at the Portlaoise hospital claims breast cancer services were worse in April 2002 than they were in the mid-1990s and that he was writing to the minister out of a deep sense of despair and frustration.

Mr Naughton followed that three years later with a letter to Ms Harney warning cancer services at the hospital were a shambles.

Health Service Executive chief Professor Brendan Drumm also attended the meeting but did not discuss the missing letter.

At the three-and-a-half-hour committee hearing, Dr Reilly said a Freedom of Information request for the letter had been submitted by a national newspaper but it was not made available by the department.

“They [department officials] were not able to find any correspondence prior to the letter sent to me in the summer of 2005,” Ms Harney said.

However, senior HSE official Ann Doherty, who compiled one of the three reports published yesterday into the Portlaoise cancer controversy, said she had seen the letter.

“It’s very interesting that Ann Doherty was able to get a copy of the letter but the minister wasn’t”, Labour’s health spokesperson Jan O’Sullivan said.

Meanwhile, Ms Harney defended the HSE saying the country would not have eight centres of excellence without the establishment of a unified health service.

Asked if she considered resigning over the systematic failures outlined in the reports, she said: “No. We found out what happened, we identified what went wrong and we’re going to put it right.”

Following the meeting, Labour leader Eamon Gilmore said the letter from Mr Naughton raised very serious questions for Micheál Martin.

“The letter sets out in very stark terms the problems Mr Naughton was then facing and its shows that responsibility for the shocking deficiencies in the cancer service in Portlaoise, highlighted in the series of reports published this week, must be shared between Ministers Harney and Martin,” he said.

“The current Minister for Health Mary Harney has disputed the existence of the letter, but the copy of the letter produced today shows that it is clearly addressed to the Minister for Health.

“While the minister may not have opened his own post, I find it very difficult to believe that a letter of such importance would not have been placed before him for his attention,” he said.

Meanwhile, earlier Taoiseach Bertie Ahern said he was glad the three reports into the cancer controversy had been published.

“The important thing is that the recommendations and the lessons are learned,” he said.

“Our concerns all the time are with the women concerned and we were very careful to make contact, going through the report, with those who were liaising with them.

“I think they would want to see that we learned lessons from this.”