Stephen Teap: ‘End the games and honour my Irene’
CERVICALCHECK campaigner Stephen Teap has told the Government ‘the honeymoon is over’ and it must now solve the problem of cervical cancer victims being dragged through the courts.
Speaking yesterday on the third anniversary of the death of his wife, Irene, Mr Teap said that women have to fight for compensation in court, despite the setting up of a tribunal to assess payments for victims.
Writing on Twitter, he said it has been a very difficult week, with the death of CervicalCheck campaigner, Ruth Morrissey, last week and Irene’s anniversary.
‘Irene was taken from this world far too early and now we know it should never have happened. She was denied the opportunity to be a mother to her children, a wife to her husband, a daughter to her parents, an older sister to her sisters, an aunt to nieces and nephews, a friend to her friends. And for what? Failed by her State, failed by the healthcare system she worked in and also relied on,’ he wrote.
Irene Teap worked for the HSE, through which she obtained a cervical cancer test that gave a false negative result. She died in 2017.
‘My message is simple and it is to [Health Minister] Stephen Donnelly, [Taoiseach] Micheál Martin and our Government. The honeymoon period is over. You all have your lovely new jobs, which you all have fought so hard to get. It’s now time to get to work, cause we have a huge job still ahead of us,’ Mr Teap wrote.
‘Getting to the point of eradicating HPV in Ireland is my ultimate goal, and we’re getting there, HPV primary screening is now in, HPV vaccine is now in for boys and girls,’ he wrote, adding that it was time to end the games and settle victims’ claims.
Tánaiste Leo Varadkar said yesterday that the Government will improve the cervical screening programme following criticism from CervicalCheck campaigner Vicky Phelan.
Ms Phelan said that while the majority of recommendations from the Scally Report have been taken on board, the more serious recommendations have not. Those include the introduction of the mandatory open disclosure.
Writing in a Sunday newspaper, Ms Phelan appealed to Mr Martin and Mr Donnelly not to wait until she has died before making changes, but ‘do the right thing and right the wrongs of the past’.
She called on the Government to set up the steering committee to oversee CervicalCheck, make the changes to the CervicalCheck Tribunal and to help the Labour Party leader Alan Kelly with plans to introduce legislation to amend the Civil Liability Act.
Ms Phelan said she was angered that the State and the HSE had failed to apologise to Ms Morrissey before her death last Sunday.
Responding to her criticism, Mr Varadkar said the Government will put forward patient safety legislation in the Dáil. ‘We have put aside funding to develop a cervical check lab here in Ireland so that we can build up capacity to do the tests in Ireland rather than overseas,’ he said.
‘The CervicalCheck tribunal is established in law, but isn’t up and running. That needs to be up and running now ,’ the Tánaiste added.
‘I think one of the things that was achieved by Ruth Morrissey, in the judgment that she got in the Supreme Court, is that it sets out a framework against which the State claims agencies can settle cases and settle them quickly and they should do that.
‘But we do need to bear in mind, there will be occasions where there’s a dispute about the facts, where some experts will say that a smear was misread or others will say it wasn’t actually and it wasn’t negligence.
‘Where there is a dispute of the facts then you need some sort of hearing and, unfortunately, that’s unavoidable and I wish I’d realised that a bit better two years ago,’ he said.
‘We have a huge job ahead of us’ ‘Right the wrongs of the past’