Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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718. To ask the Minister for Health the number of claims ongoing by the State Claims Agency relating to late diagnosis and missed diagnosis in respect of failings in the CervicalCheck screening programme; the number of cases settled; the amount paid out in claims to date; and the legal costs of the cases to date. [40105/20]

Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail)
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The State Claims Agency (SCA) has a statutory remit to manage personal injury claims on behalf of Delegated State Authorities including the Health Service Executive.

I have been informed by the SCA that the information below has been extracted from the National Incident Management System (NIMS) and is accurate as of 25/11/2020.

1. Number of Claims: To date the SCA has received 231 claims relating to allegations of misinterpretation of slides by the National Screening Service. Of these, 188 relate to Clinical Care claims brought directly by the service users, the remaining 43 relate to psychological injury claims brought by family members/dependents.In relation to the 231 claims received, 9 have been concluded, and 13 have been fully resolved.

2. Amount paid out in claims to date: Due to the low number of claims, this figure is not published as it could lead to the identification of an individual. It should be noted that almost all of the claims have been settled by the laboratories involved in the individual claims and, accordingly, the Agency does not, in all instances, have details of settlement payments made by those laboratories. This applies equally to the associated legal costs – see 3 below.

3. Legal costs of the cases: In respect of all associated National Screening Services (CervicalCheck) cases, legal costs amounting to €2,581,656 have been paid. These legal costs include fees paid to mediation services, which is consistent with the SCA’s policy of using mediation wherever possible to resolve these claims in a non-adversarial manner. These legal fees also include matters not relating to the areas in which the State has already accepted liability. It is anticipated that much of the legal work carried out in respect of these initial cases, and by extension the fees incurred, will be applied in resolving future cases that have been notified to the SCA and that this legal work will not need to be repeated in managing these future cases.