Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú) | Oireachtas source

Before Christmas, I held a meeting with the clinical director of CervicalCheck regarding the content of a letter she sent me. In this meeting, and in the letter, CervicalCheck criticised remarks I made in the Dáil on the scandal. I was criticised for suggesting that women had been wronged and for my use of words such as "mistakes" and "misreadings". CervicalCheck stated women had not been wronged; they had just been unfortunate. When probed at a meeting, CervicalCheck clarified its position was in contradiction of court rulings and the position of the Government. It should be remembered that the Government had issued a State apology to the women affected. It is significant that CervicalCheck does not accept that women have been wronged, slides have been misread or mistakes have been made.

Different arms of the State, the Government and the courts are in conflict with another arm of the State, that is, the HSE and CervicalCheck. When I raised this at the time with the Taoiseach he said he would check out this contradiction immediately because, he said, "We all have to uphold the decisions of the courts and the Supreme Court." The Minister for Health, Deputy Donnelly, subsequently wrote to me saying that CervicalCheck had confirmed that its position was not as I had alleged it to be. When I probed as to how he had arrived at his conclusion, the Minister, confirmed to me in a reply to a parliamentary question that he had not met or corresponded with CervicalCheck on this issue but had instead studied the remarks that it had made in the media. That is an incredible situation on an issue of such gravity. A blatant contradiction remains at the heart of the Government approach to CervicalCheck which says to the women who have been wronged, "Sorry, but we're not sorry." This has caused major hurt to the survivors of CervicalCheck.

Responding to the remarks made by the clinical director of CervicalCheck in the health committee, Vicky Phelan said she was shocked to see that such an attitude "is still in place two and a half years after my case broke open the CervicalCheck debacle and an independent review by Dr. Gabriel Scally found that CervicalCheck was doomed to fail, identifying serious gaps in governance structures and misogynistic treatment". The 221+ support group also said that it was deeply concerned by the comments attributed to Dr. Russell. The group immediately wrote to the CervicalCheck steering committee to express concerns that comments betray the commitment of Government and operational agencies to cultural change within CervicalCheck.

Tributes have been made here this evening to many women, such as Vicky Phelan, who have fought for justice. I would dearly like to echo those tributes. The tributes that have been made by the Goverment ring hollow if one arm of the State still maintains that nothing wrong has been done. It is an incredible situation that there still hangs within an arm of Government an attitude that the Government has never done anything wrong. The reason that attitude is maintained by that one arm of Government is that the instinct remains within the HSE to fight every individual, if necessary, through the courts.

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