It’s too easy for the State to say sorry – now it has to act
IT APPEARS we are living in a sorry State. Yesterday, Tánaiste Simon Coveney apologised to Vicky Phelan, who is dying of cervical cancer but was only told of her diagnosis three years after a smear test was first taken. The thing about apologies is that they are hollow without amends. Without taking the urgent steps to prevent the same life-shattering mistakes from being repeated, with a cast-iron commitment that no more harm will be done, it is all folly. This can only be guaranteed by oversight and accountability. Ms Phelan’s case has shaken confidence in the CervicalCheck, our national screening programme. We now know 14 other women are also understood to have been diagnosed in a 2014 review.
And serious questions demand serious answers.
As a result of this story a decision has been made that from now on patients will be informed of reviews automatically rather than optionally.
There will be an obligation to tell people of their diagnosis. Many will be shocked to discover that a caring, compassionate system would not already compel doctors to tell women of their cancer test errors. Mr Coveney referred to “a shameful series of events” that has had such a calamitous effect on Ms Phelan’s life. So much for words.
None of this is acceptable at any level. Should an apology be followed by an excuse or a reason, it is a safe bet the same grievous errors – no matter how abject the apology – will almost certainly be committed again. So we need reforms.
A thorough investigation into the approach taken by CervicalCheck must be conducted. Someone has to explain what happened and why, in order to guarantee such a disaster cannot reoccur.
Remember, Ms Phelan was in the care of our State. The bill for her mistreatment was footed by taxpayers. The harrowing ordeal she was forced to endure was appalling and inhumane.
BY any yardstick this has been a bleak week for our State. Yesterday we also heard how the HSE was forced to apologise for failings in the care of a baby girl who died shortly after birth. On top of the devastation of losing their newly born daughter, Ciara Loughlin’s parents Elizabeth and John also had to learn the HSE “regretted” that Ms Loughlin’s medical records were altered in relation to the timing of her admission to hospital in 2007.
The couple had just wanted to know what happened to Ciara after an RTÉ ‘Prime Time’ programme about the deaths of four babies at the Midland Regional Hospital in Portlaoise was aired in 2014.
The HSE also apologised unreservedly to three other women for failings in care. The girls had been raped and abused – and one was left with the same family and raped again, even though the HSE had been given a “credible” account of details four years earlier. The DPP did not prosecute and the girls suffered more anguish for years before prosecutions were finally brought.
We need to take a cold hard look at how our agencies conduct their business in our names.
During the abuse investigations that rocked the Catholic Church to its foundations, we learned that the reputation of the institution became more important than the individuals it was there to serve. But statutory institutions belong to us, not the other way round.
Surely we are entitled to expect more than belated regrets offered only after massively stressful legal battles?