Empty pledges add to hurt for cancer scandal victims
THE root of the cervical cancer scandal was an inability of various arms of the State to communicate and act cohesively – and those same failures are still dogging the controversy.
Since the CervicalCheck scandal was made public by Vicky Phelan on the steps of the Four Courts at the end of April, politicians have struggled to get a grip on the escalating crisis.
As the level of public outrage threatened to overwhelm the Government, a series of promises and assurances was made by members of the Government. These were made, it now seems, to quell the tide of rising public anger, without much thought given to the practicalities of what was being pledged.
The women involved in the CervicalCheck scandal would not be dragged through the courts. A redress scheme would be set up for those women affected. A package of support measures, including medical cards and childcare, would be made available to women and their families.
To date, none of these commitments has been met. While senior ministers within the Government were able to credibly distance themselves from the scandal when it first erupted, given nobody within the HSE or CervicalCheck bothered to tell them in advance, their handling of the crisis is now causing additional confusion and stress for those women. At the core of what is now going wrong is politicians’ love of making expansive promises to dampen down negative headlines, and leaving it to other people to work out boring details, like costs and the wider implications.
Take for instance what should have been the easiest promise to fulfil – the assurance from Health Minister Simon Harris that every woman involved would get some basic support measures. A discretionary medical card, an exemption from prescription charges, free counselling and free childcare.
One would have thought, given these supports need to be extended to just 209 women, they could have been put in place quite quickly. Within a matter of days, not weeks. Instead, women are still waiting on these packages.
Speaking in the Dáil last week, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said public health nurses were visiting each of the women involved, to gauge what they needed so that individualised packages could be put together.
But, at a minimum, everybody is going to at least get a medical card. So, why not just start issuing them? Why wait around? Meanwhile, Mr Varadkar was unable to tell the Dáil exactly how many women have been visited by nurses or how long more they will have to wait to get these minimum supports.
This is basic information that Mr Varadkar should have had to hand, both to assure the women affected and to let the public know that his Government is effectively dealing with this crisis.
Similarly, it was Mr Varadkar who first mooted a redress scheme being set up, but nobody knew who the redress was for and what it would be comprised of. Initially, there seemed to be mixed messages coming from Government. While Mr Varadkar was openly talking about redress, Mr Harris was more guarded. He said, on May 1, redress was “not something I am ruling out”, but said he first wanted to establish the facts. Which seems both reasonable and prudent.
However, by May 8, Mr Varadkar was telling the Dáil that a redress scheme would definitely be set up for women who were not given full disclosure about their health records. He said that “while the State may not have a legal liability … it does have a moral liability and consequently we will need to provide redress”.
Given the fulsome nature of this commitment – that any woman who was not informed that her smear was part of an audit will get redress – what is stopping the Government from just going ahead and starting it? Presumably, it is the fact that it will be difficult to try to determine what this redress scheme will entail and the precise number of women who will benefit. But instead of working through the boring detail and the potential cost of such a scheme, Mr Varadkar preferred to just announce it.
In relation to those women, approximately 166 who were diagnosed with cervical cancer after they were given a false negative smear result, Mr Varadkar said those cases “need to be looked at in some detail because there are different forms of false negatives,
namely those within acceptable bounds of normal margin of error and those which should not have been missed”.
However, one can understand both the women concerned and the public being somewhat confused if the Taoiseach, on the one hand, is stating every woman who was not informed about the audit would get redress, while those who got the all-clear when they had cancer may not.
Similar confusion appears to be swirling around the Four Courts where at least one woman taking a
case against the State, Emma Mhic Mhathúna, had assumed, on the basis of politicians’ comments, that her case would be handled swiftly.
IN fact, last week, Mr Varadkar told the Dáil that the State Claims Agency was “advancing a new initiative aimed at expediting resolution of the outstanding legal cases in a sensitive manner, utilising mediation wherever possible and wherever agreed”.
One wonders how much time Mr Varadkar gave the State Claims Agency to try to come up with this new procedure, before publicly announcing it and lending credence to the widely held perception that none of these cases would trouble the courts. Sometimes the most difficult thing in politics is to wait – wait until information is available before wading in with promises and commitments. Almost as soon as
the cervical cancer scandal was made public, Government ministers were already talking about tribunals and redress schemes. They did this before they had any idea of the liability of the State or the precise numbers of women involved.
However, other people, those who work in the State Claims Agency for instance, have to have regard for things like costs, legal exposure and the broader implications for other legal cases – those involving Breast Check, for example.
The CervicalCheck scandal has been riddled with confusion since it started – how it happened, who was responsible for imparting the information, and the nature of the screening programme itself.
Politicians making empty promises, and failing to deliver, will just further add to that confusion and increase the hurt felt by those women affected.
As soon as the scandal was made public, ministers talked about tribunals and redress