Simon Harris 'not sure actually' if deceit over CervicalCheck scandal was deliberate

The concealment of information from women caught up in the CervicalCheck scandal was deceitful, but not necessarily deliberately so, Health Minister Simon Harris has said.

He was responding to claims that some senior staff in the health service were dismayed at the Taoiseach’s use of the word during the formal State apology to the victims.

During the apology in the Dáil, Leo Varadkar said he was sorry for the “humiliation, the disrespect, the deceit, the false reassurance, the attempts to play down the seriousness of this debacle by some”.

Mr Harris said:

I’m not sure actually if it [the deceit] was deliberate. It sounds more like to me that it was a situation where they intended to disclose and then, as we all know through the Dr Scally reports, there was a complete and utter litany of failures in terms of closing that loop.

Dr Gabriel Scally’s investigation of the CervicalCheck Screening Programme followed its failure to disclose to at least 220 women who had cervical cancer that their smear histories had been audited and that the audit showed they could potentially have benefited from earlier treatment.

The results of an audit of the smear tests of more than 1,000 women who took part in a review conducted by the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists are currently being communicated to women.

Mr Harris said once this communication process has ended, he will receive “an aggregate report” which will “outline the overall view that RCOG has taken of our CervicalCheck Screening Programme".

He also said he will bring the Patient Safety Bill - which includes mandatory disclosure when adverse events take place in the health service - to Cabinet next month.