State response to scandal is nothing short of unpardonable

OUR deepest feelings cannot be seen or even touched but sometimes they can be heard, and yesterday they rang out in the words of Emma Mhic Mhathúna. The 37-year-old mother-of-five told ‘Morning Ireland’: “I’m dying and I didn’t need to die.” What cleaved the hearts of listeners across the country was her wondering out loud: “I don’t know if my little baby will remember me.”

Today, Ms Mhic Mhathúna goes for another test. It will tell her how long she has left to live. Back in 2013, she was told that her smear test was clear. It wasn’t. Had it been read correctly, things would be different.

Two weeks into the worst health scandal in the history of our State, the searing revelations keep coming. As the numbers of wronged and mistreated women rise the questions mount. That is not how you take hold of a crisis or treat terrified women. If the Government’s response was faltering from the start, 14 days on it is deplorable. Unless it changes rapidly, it will have done irrevocable damage to its chances of survival.

But this is far more important than the survival of a Government. We are discussing the survival of women; and the devastation and desolation of their families.

IF there ever was a fig leaf of decency or sensitivity in the State’s response to this scandal, it shrivelled yesterday with the surfacing of a damning memo showing the HSE was advised by its national screening service in 2016 that there was a risk patients might start contacting media to say screening did not diagnose their cancer.

Was the service more concerned with a risk of what could happen to its own reputation in the headlines than it was with communicating life-altering information to women about their health?

Remember, were it not for the heroism of Vicky Phelan we would not have known about all this from the start. Seventeen women are dead, more will follow. The dramatis personae in this saga have all been the victims from the outset. Yet they are still frightened and desperately appealing for reassurance.

They await even entry-level empathy or the faintest vestige of emotional intelligence from those responsible.

The standing of both Health Minister Simon Harris and Taoiseach Leo Varadkar diminishes daily as the calls for clarity and a sense of resolution go unanswered.

Ms Mhic Mhathúna is in no doubt: “The Government needs to go; they’re not actually capable of minding us.”

Her withering assessment speaks to an unpardonable callousness that characterises everything about this tragedy. The State has forced sick women to run a legal gauntlet. The longer their sense of abandonment continues the weaker the moral arguments for sustaining the Government becomes. Far from ducking for cover, the Taoiseach needs to stand up and show authority.

A sense of confidence that the needs of the women matter has yet to be established. A commitment that such an unspeakable nightmare can never be visited on an unsuspecting woman again is not too much to hope for. The best way out is always through. The notion that a fear of how the media might react could compromise the health of women or could take precedence over a duty of care speaks to something deeply repugnant to any concept of a health service. Sooner or later, the truth will surface and anyone caught on the wrong side of it must face the full and bitter consequences.