State settles more than 150 claims from CervicalCheck scandal
Aontu leader Peadar Toibin says the Cervical Check Tribunal has failed.
The State has now settled more than 150 claims brought by women and families caught up in the CervicalCheck scandal.
Aontú leader Peadar Tóibín said the figures prove that the Cervical Check Tribunal has failed as has Leo Varadkar's previous promise that no woman would be forced to go through the courts to get justice.
Since 2018, the State Claims Agency has settled 153 claims and there are around 225 more claims which have yet to be resolved. However, at the start of November, just 25 claims had been submitted to the CervcialCheck Tribunal with the majority of people still opting to go to the High Court.
"We're all familiar with the names of some of the women who've settled cases against the State in relation to the misreading of their smear tests. However, the vast majority of the settlements do not feature in the media, as the women do not go public with their stories," Mr Tóibín said.
He also raised concerns around the implementation of the Brian MacCraith report, which reviewed delays in issuing cervical screening HPV retest results to a large group of women and their GPs.
Mr Tóibín called for the implementation of a recommendation that an examination be conducted to determine if the 4,088 women who experienced delays in receiving result letters, or indeed who received incorrect letters as a result of an IT Glitch in Quest Diagnostics in 2019, have suffered impacts on their lives or health as a result of the delays.
"There is no information forthcoming, three years and three months since the recommendation, highlights the lack of learning within the Department and HSE when it comes to this scandal. I know from speaking to one of the 4,088 women that she has not received follow-up on her slide. Sharon Butler Hughes deserves enormous credit for her work on exposing this particular element of the scandal," said Mr Tóibín.
