Verona Murphy (Wexford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

This Bill appears to be simple. I will support it. What does not seem to be so simple is the process these women have to go through. The purpose of the Bill is to extend the period for making claims for compensation to the CervicalCheck tribunal from January 2022 to July 2022. In line with Deputies from the Regional Group, I urge the Minister to take that time to review the situation and engage with claimants.

Everybody seems to be affected in some way by Covid. The extra time available to make a claim goes some way towards allowing for delays during lockdowns, which were inevitable when it came to many services. People working from home or not working with their usual colleagues, and a variety of other issues, make the preparation of claims, such as the ones related to CervicalCheck, a little more time-consuming and slow than might otherwise be the case. From that point of view, the extra time being made available in this Bill should be welcomed.

I hope that once the deadline for claims has been reached, the tribunal will progress at relative speed given the nature of the topic and the health status of the victims involved. We have seen some examples of tribunals lasting for way too long in the past, but it is important that progress is made swiftly on this one. It took 14 years to publish the Moriarty tribunal report and 15 years to publish the Mahon tribunal report. I hope for the sake of these women and their families that the CervicalCheck tribunal will produce a published report and compensation arrangement far more quickly than that.

The CervicalCheck scandal continues to have a major daily impact on the victims still lucky enough to be alive. Vicky Phelan is perhaps the most well-known of those involved because it was her original court case that brought this scandal to light. Some 208 women were falsely given the all-clear. It was subsequently discovered that 162 women were not informed of their false results when they were discovered. One of the most shocking elements of all is that one of the main reasons for the delay in informing the women was a difference of opinion as to who should tell them. I understand it was not until six years after Vicky Phelan's test, and three years after the error was discovered, that she was informed of the mistake in her test result. No doubt, many others were left in the dark for similarly unacceptable lengths of time.

The Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Tony Holohan, was quite determined in his attempts to avoid an independent review of this scandal. He warned the then Minister that to announce a review would unnecessarily undermine public confidence in CervicalCheck when there was no evidence, at that stage, of quality or patient safety concerns about the programme. Surely, it was outrageous for Dr. Holohan to claim there was no evidence of patient safety concerns about the CervicalCheck programme. There were more than 200 false results, a three-year delay in identifying the mistake and a further three-year delay in informing patients of the mistake. I cannot understand how Dr. Holohan was of the view that those matters did not fall into the category of quality or patient safety concerns.

I have a major fear of history repeating itself. There will be a need for a Covid-19 tribunal. Many things have happened in the past 14 months that will require investigation by a tribunal. While Dr. Holohan's every word with regard to Covid is venerated by the Government, we saw a scandalous neglect of our cancer patients in the early stages of the Covid-19 response. Cancer screenings were shut down, treatments were disrupted and there were, no doubt, countless missed or delayed diagnoses, which will, unfortunately, have devastating effects on many people and families. As I have said previously, it seems the authorities did not mind what you died from as long as it was not Covid.

I do not know if all these things were recommended by the National Public Health Emergency Team, NPHET, or if they were part of a Government solo run, but judging by how little Government has been willing to deviate from the advice of NPHET, I would be surprised if the closure of services was not done at its behest. There is no doubt of the need for a tribunal of inquiry into all the Covid-related decisions, that the citizens of Ireland have been subjected to for the past 18 months. Dr. Holohan suggested he should have been the one to conduct the inquiry into the CervicalCheck scandal. I sincerely hope that any suggestion that he, or NPHET, conduct the inquiry into the various Covid-19 scandals will be met with short shrift by the Minister of the day.

I welcome the extension of the time available to make a compensation claim under the tribunal examining the CervicalCheck scandal. I hope that those who apply for compensation are justly compensated for the pain and suffering inflicted on them and are given a fair hearing. I also hope those who are requested to appear before the tribunal do so and that they provide open and honest evidence to the patients affected by the scandal, who are still putting up a good fight. I wish those patients all the best. I hope they will receive the answers and compensation they deserve in a timely fashion and that their families will know they fought for them so that a broken system would be called out, giving us all hope for the future.

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