Pressure on chief medical officer after new memo
Documents show State’s chief medical officer knew of CervicalCheck ‘damning memo’ in 2016... so why didn’t he act?
THERE was fresh pressure on the State’s chief medical officer last night as newly released documents show that he was aware of serious problems in the cervical screening programme for the past two years.
Tony Holohan told one of his officials that they should ‘have a word’ after being alerted about problems in March 2016 by the HSE.
However, neither he nor any other high-ranking Department of Health staff who were included on the memo, flagged the issue with either then-health minister Leo Varadkar, or his successor Simon Harris.
Labour TD and vice-chairman of the Public Accounts Committee Alan Kelly told the Irish Daily Mail: ‘It is absolutely insane, incomprehensible that so many officials had seen this memo and none of them realised the importance of informing the women affected.’
This comes as the HSE said last night that it would conclude a ‘matching process’ with the National Cancer Registry in the next week, amid fears that there may yet be other women who were not notified that they had falsely tested negative for cancer.
The HSE says it is working with the registry ‘to identify any other women who had cervical cancer during this time, who may also have had a CervicalCheck test’.
The new revelations of problems in CervicalCheck come from 122 pages of documents released by the Department of Health yesterday.
They show that, in March 2016, Dr Holohan was forwarded the damning memo, unveiled at last weeks’ Dáil public accounting committee, that discussed a media strategy to deal with the contro- versy, with no mention of informing patients.
The memo was first discussed between five department officials, and representatives from the National Cancer Control Programme and the National Screening Service, also known as the Health and Wellness Directorate.
They met on March 3 that year, where the matter was raised verbally, and subsequent to this the memo was circulated among officials. Officials from the Department of Health’s cancer unit present at the meeting included assistant secretaries Tracey Conroy and Fiona Conroy, principal officer Michael Conroy, assistant principal officer Keith Comiskey and administrative officer Clodagh Murphy.
On March 31, Dr Holohan emailed one of those officials, assistant secretary Ms Conroy to say: ‘Tracey, We might have a word about this.’
Dr Holohan and former HSE director general Tony O’Brien were thought to be the only people to have seen the memo at the time.
Department officials also received the subsequent updates to the memo in July 2016.
The briefing memo, branded ‘a bombshell’ at last week’s PAC, contained ‘next steps’ advising those involved with the audit to ‘pause all letters’ to doctors, ‘await advice of solicitors’ and to continue preparing a media strategy.
Labour’s Mr Kelly said the latest document release showed what happened after the memo was circulated and ‘shows the department were well aware of these issues back in 2016.’
He added: ‘They were aware that these women existed, [women] who needed to be told about their smear results. The memo was being passed around the department, but they felt there was no need to tell the minister. There are serious questions to answer over the volume of officials who were aware of this memo.
The documents were circulated by Majella Byrne of behalf of Dr Stephanie O’Keefe, both of the National Screening Service. Later
‘It is absolutely insane’ ‘None of this was escalated’
versions of the memo were circulated by Simon Murtagh, acting head of the organisation.
The documents were released by the Department of Health last night, with Taoiseach Leo Varadkar earlier having told the Dáil they proved neither he nor Health Minister Simon Harris was aware of the memo back in 2016. ‘The documents released will show that none of this was escalated beyond the office of CMO (chief medical officer) and the office of acute hospital services,’ he said. ’
Asked if the Taoiseach’s assertion stood up to scrutiny in light of how many department officials knew about the scandal, Mr Kelly said: ‘It remains to be seen. I will take him at his word on that.’
He added: ‘But there are serious questions over whether this was even a functioning department. This wasn’t raised at any of their monthly management board meetings with the minister. If this wasn’t important enough to be discussed at those meetings, you have to ask, what was?’ Comment – Page 14 james.ward@dailymail.ie