'I know she was proud of me': Daughter of CervicalCheck victim gets top marks in Leaving Cert
Leaving Certificate student Sorcha Carrick, daughter of Cervical Check victim Patricia Carrick. Sorcha obtained a H1 in each exam she took.
Getting top marks in her Leaving Certificate was a bittersweet moment for teenager Sorcha Carrick.
Her mother Trish, one of the victims of Ireland's CervicalCheck scandal, isn’t alive to hug her daughter and to beam with pride at her 625 points.
“If she was, she’d have danced around the kitchen,” said Sorcha's father, Damien.
Taoiseach Micheál Martin stood up in the Dáil last year and apologised to Trish on behalf of the State because her cancer was missed by CervicalCheck.
The 51-year-old mother-of-four died a few days later surrounded by her family at their home in Galway last November.
As well as Sorcha and Damien, by her side were sons Ciarán and Eoin, and her other daughter, RĂoghna.
Mr Martin, who had only been asked a few days beforehand to grant Trish her dying wish, read a long statement out on the floor of the Dail.
In it, he said she had been "badly let down".
And he said: "On behalf of the Government and on behalf of the nation, I offer my genuine and heartfelt apologies.”
Sorcha, who did her Leaving Cert at Coláiste an Eachréidh in Athenry, obtained a H1 in each exam she took, which included Irish, English, maths, and German.
Instead of letting the tragedy of her mother’s death distract her, Sorcha said she felt she needed to make sure she did her best.
“When she passed, I felt the need to achieve my highest potential because I know that that's what she would have wanted,” the 18-year-old, who will study languages in UCC, said.
“So you can say that it definitely helped in a way.
“It was a strange sort of motivation, and one I never expected to have.
“I know she was proud of me."
Dad Damien said: “I'm just delighted. It's a really proud moment for me, but it has kind of its own tinge of sadness because Trish would have danced around the kitchen with this result.
“She would have just been so proud of Sorcha.
Trish had successfully sued after she discovered CervicalCheck misread a scan in 2016.
By the time her cancer was eventually diagnosed in July 2019, it was too late to do anything about it other than try to buy time with her family.
Last October, she won an unprecedented apology and an admission of negligence in the High Court from the HSE and from the laboratory which missed her cancer.
The apology was read out at the Four Courts.
She had been too ill to attend in person to hear it but Damien sat in the courtroom as counsel for the HSE Patrick Hanratty SC read out the apology on behalf of the HSE and the MedLab Pathology Ltd.
It stated: "The Health Service Executive and Medlab Pathology Ltd acknowledge that the liquid-based cytology sample of May 31, 2016, was read in a manner that was negligent and in breach of duty.”
Patricia was in hospital when Mr Martin made his public apology to her in the Dáil.
Damien, who watched it with her on her hospital bed as tears streamed down her face, had said it was his and his dying wife’s wish that the State should apologise for what had happened.
At her funeral, she was remembered as a kind, loving mother.
Damien told of how she liked nothing more than being at home with her family “immersed in the conversation and part of the fun”.
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