Ms Lorraine Walsh:

My experience of the RCOG review has been catastrophic so I could not have any faith in it whatsoever. I got report No. 1 that said my slide was missing. On the same day, I got a letter from the HSE explaining that the same slide had been mislabelled so, in fact, it was not missing. My question here is not about the clinical reading of these slides but more about the reporting of them.

On page 20 of the RCOG report, they allude to the process of the generating of letters in saying that it required a recheck of both the CervicalCheck database, the National Cancer Registry database and their own master RCOG database. That is three databases they were supposed to be rechecking before issuing each individual letter. How could it possibly be that they issued a letter to me telling me that my slide was missing when, in fact, they had it, they had reviewed it and produced another report that evening to say they had reviewed it? To me, it would seem that when they were compiling the individual reports they were not checking them individually even though their report states that they had a three-step check. On top of that the HSE had a verification process, that they were trying to pick up on any inaccuracies as well. If both of their processes were that good and that accurate then how did I, who happened to be just the one patient representative that was involved in this, get an inaccurate report on top of them taking my slide, mislabelling it and putting Vicky Phelan's label on my slide? I cannot say I have faith in the review.

To me, if any women and families are involved in this, regardless of what result they have got through RCOG, my advice to them would be to get an independent review to get the truth. Let us remember that is all people want - the truth. People only want to know what happened. We were all brought in and told there was a potential miss in our cases but people were not sure if it fell within the limitations of screening or whether there was negligence in the case. One cannot undo that. One cannot just say, "Fair enough, I will take that" and walk away and get on with one's life. One must find out the truth. It would seem that this review is not going to give those answers.

In terms of supports, there are two layers to this. There are supports from the 221+ perspective and the supports for women who are living with and past cervical cancer. Last week, I met my clinician and he said to me: "My big problem is not cervical cancer. My big problem is women coming in here living with the aftereffects of cervical cancer and I do not have the supports to help them."

Last year, when I started getting symptoms of lymphoedema, I was sent around in a circle because there is no clinic in Ireland at the moment to treat people with lymphedema, to get early intervention and early diagnosis, which is critical in the management of lymphoedema. Lymphoedema is a horrible sideeffect of cervical cancer and one can get it from other cancers as well. We have got to start looking after these women. There are a lot of young women who are surviving with lots of problems post-cervical cancer. That is something that the Government needs to start looking at. It must improve the qualify of life for women who are living with and after this disease.