CervicalCheck report to be published

By Juno McEnroe and Daniel McConnell

The CervicalCheck inquiry report, to be released this week, will recommend how to improve screening services and also examine laboratories used by health chiefs.

The Scally inquiry will be presented to Cabinet, then outlined to women and their families, and then likely published.

The inquiry was commissioned after terminally ill Limerick mother Vicky Phelan settled a court case about her cancer, which was missed in a smear some three years before she was diagnosed.

The missed test only came to light in 2014, but health services did not tell her until 2017. 209 women have been affected by the scandal and 17 of those have also died.

Speaking at the Kennedy Summer School, in New Ross, on the weekend, Health Minister Simon Harris said he was meeting Dr Scally today and that they would discuss the report and recommendations. The minister said he wanted the women and families to first get details of the report.

“I know Dr Scally is eager for that to happen, so the timetable is likely to be that I meet Dr Scally on Monday, that I would bring the report to Cabinet on Wednesday, and, in and around that time, Dr Scally would also be in a position to brief those who have been affected by CervicalCheck,” said Mr Harris. “And I would hope to publish the report on Wednesday.”

Mr Harris said he expected that the report would examine how cancer-screening services could be improved in Ireland.

“How we can make sure that lessons are learnt, in what went wrong in relation to how the clinical audit was carried out, regarding CervicalCheck,” he said.

“But also that Dr Scally, working with the expert medical and legal team that he had, can also provide us with assurances in relation to the laboratories being used by the Irish screening service.”

This would the first expert external report on screening services and the minister said he looked forward to implementing the recommendations. Dr Scally was asked to examine details of non-disclosure of information from CervicalCheck audits to patients and relatives. This included what the HSE and the Department of Health knew.

Dr Scally is expected to be critical about the communication between the department and the HSE over the audits and what officials knew. This, in turn, led to women not being informed about the missed tests.

The inquiry has also examined the tendering, contracting, and operation of laboratories contracted for CervicalCheck.

Ms Phelan and the other women have been consulted by the inquiry. Further-more, the Government is likely to accede to requests for a larger investigation, once the scoping inquiry by Dr Scally is released.

Meanwhile, the Future of Policing report, which had been expected this week, is now not likely to be published until next week, at the earliest. The Department of Justice is to release the report, following years of crises within it and An Garda Síochána.