‘No point in talks,’ say victims

VICKY Phelan has revealed that she and the 221+ advocacy group see ‘no point’ in continuing talks in relation to the CervicalCheck tribunal.

The tribunal was announced last year and was set up to allow women have their cases heard without having to go to court. However, Ms Phelan said the patient support group fears the tribunal will not be able to do what it wants to, as the ‘landscape has changed fundamentally’ because of delays.

On Friday, 221+, a group established by the women affected by the 2018 CervicalCheck controversy, confirmed it will no longer be engaging with the

Department of Health about the tribunal. The group believes the tribunal in its current form has been ‘overtaken by previous judgments’.

Ms Phelan told Newstalk’s Off The Record With Gavin Duffy yesterday that the group had written to Health Minister Stephen Donnelly within two days of his appointment.

‘It took almost two months to get a meeting at this stage,’ she said.

That meeting has been followed by numerous Zoom meetings and many exchanges of ‘quite long and technical’ letters about the issues. However, despite the ‘protracted negotiations’, 221+ said key concerns remain.

Ms Phelan said: ‘If the tribunal had been established when it was supposed to be established, we wouldn’t be having these issues or these arguments.’

She said the delays in establishing the tribunal meant that many members were at risk of having their cases thrown out of the High Court or tribunal due to statute of limitation issues.

The campaigner recently revealed that her cancer is again progressing, after its growth was halted when she began taking the drug Pembrolizumab.