Here’s an idea, Leo: save your attacks for the HSE bosses who failed Emma and Vicky so dreadfully

FOR all who heard Emma Mhic Mhathúna’s emotional interview on Morning Ireland in May, when she first told of the cancer that had been missed in a smear test, the news she delivered on Wednesday night was doubly devastating.

On her Facebook page, she wrote: ‘I found out today the cancer has spread to my brain. I’m not scared, just heartbroken. I love my life, my children and all of you, my new-found friends.’

Many heard of her latest setback for the first time yesterday morning, when she spoke to Miriam O’Callaghan on RTÉ Radio One. She told how the tumours are in the left side of her brain, and that the symptoms would be seizures, loss of speech, and loss of concentration.

‘I don’t like how quick it’s going,’ she said plaintively. ‘It’s just I have no control over it. In some ways, I wish it was all over.’

That is the very human toll of the CervicalCheck scandal, the real-world effect on a single parent bringing up five children and knowing that her time with them is going to be cut short.

By cruel coincidence, we also learned yesterday that an independent review of over 3,000 cervical smear tests has not yet begun, even though we initially were told, when the scandal emerged after Vicky Phelan’s court case, that it would be completed by the end of June.

And, tragically, there now are 221 women known to have been affected, adding another 12 to the 209 first announced.

Bereft

Some of that number already have died, leaving behind grieving partners and parents, bewildered children, and bereft friends. Other women are undergoing treatment and some are facing the same heartbreak now visited upon Emma.

She is lucky in one sense, insofar as the legal action she took against the laboratory that conducted the tests and the HSE (a third party, the National Maternity Hospital, was stuck out of proceedings) has concluded, though not without controversy. During the hearing, her lawyer Cian O’Carroll, who also acted for Vicky Phelan, said the State was fighting the case and was not handing over all the screening slides as requested.

Ms Mhic Mhathúna eventually received a settlement of €7.5million, though as she said yesterday: ‘It doesn’t make any difference to me. I wasn’t taking any nonsense because I wanted my children taken care of.’

Mr O’Connor said that while the State handed over all the information in Vicky Phelan’s case within two days, it now was taking far longer. His own view is that there is an attempt at a cover-up, though there are other possible explanations, not least that Vicky Phelan’s was, at the time, a single case, whereas now the HSE has to provide information on over 200 of them. It surely is conscious that whatever it hands over must be the complete set of files, lest it face further criticism.

The whys and wherefores can be analysed later when the heat has gone out of the situation, but that essentially will merely offer the chance to do better in future – or, given Ireland’s propensity to stasis – simply will become an esoteric exercise that will lead to a report left to gather dust on a shelf.

What it surely will not bring is anything in the way of respite, or comfort, to the women involved, even though we were assured from the outset that the prime consideration was for their welfare – physical, mental, emotional and financial.

On 12 May, almost two months ago, the Taoiseach Leo Varadkar and Health Minister Simon Harris held a press conference to launch the package being offered to the women. They promised full disclosure, with Mr Varadkar saying the health service and cancer screening were about saving lives, not saving face. He said that Emma and Vicky had done the State ‘a service’ and assured them that the Cabinet had agreed a mediation process to ensure the women and their families in, at that time, ten outstanding cases, would not have to go to court.

A scoping inquiry also was promised, headed by Dr Gabriel Scally, and that too was promised to report back in the shorter rather than longer term. Subsequently, Dr Scally had to go public on the fact that he was being hampered in his work. In his first progress report last month, he said there was a delay in the delivery of most of the records requested by him, and that 4,000 arrived in hard copy format, when electronic files would have been much easier to analyse.

It hardly is surprising he declared himself as being ‘cross’ in a radio interview when he told RTÉ’s Drivetime: ‘It is almost impossible to conduct an inquiry dealing with thousands and thousands of files without being able to search the documentation.’

Oireachtas committees also have complained about delays in receiving information, then suddenly finding themselves swamped with mountains of paperwork shortly before officials were due to face scrutiny, leaving TDs and senators less prepared than they would wish to be in order to ask the right questions.

At the time, Mr Harris called the HSE’s actions ‘pathetic’. The Taoiseach, himself a former health minister, said that if State agencies obstructed the work of the scoping inquiry, ‘they are also obstructing the Government’.

Now I have no idea if it occurred to either man that one is the boss of the HSE, and the other is his boss, and the buck actually stops with them. A couple of judicious suspensions, without pay, in the HSE for this pathetic obstruction, perhaps even a dismissal or two, surely would focus minds far more effectively than tepid public rebukes delivered as soundbites to the media.

Obstruction

And therein lies another tale. Both men are not shy of talking to newspapers, radio and television.

Indeed, until there was uproar about what seemed destined to be a ministry for propaganda, the Taoiseach was planning to spend €5million a year on a Strategic Communications Unit, effectively a spin machine to make those of us on this side of the fence see his own performance, and that of his Government, in a more favourable light.

This week, he decided to have a go at us in the media, but all we generally try to do is hold him to account. It’s not personal, but we are entitled to match his words to his actions, and if the latter come up short, we are duty bound to point that out.

The truth, uncomfortable as it might be, is that the women at the centre of the CervicalCheck scandal were failed once. With confrontational legal actions, obstruction of the scoping inquiry, and now the delay in the independent review announced yesterday, they are being failed again.

If our scrutiny annoys him, there is a simple way around it. He can get the finger out, bang as many heads together as necessary, and do what he promised – namely expedite the process for the good of all involved.

For our part, we will continue to tell the stories of the women. We will tell why their lives matter. And we will tell, as we always strive to, what is actually going wrong when it really should be so easy for wounded Leo to get it right.