Vicky Phelan has said she never felt the State apology over the CervicalCheck scandal was sincere.
The Kilkenny campaigner is currently in the US where she is receiving an experimental new drug cancer treatment.
On The Pat Kenny Show this morning, she said the HSEs failure to admit liability in settling its case with fellow campaigner Lynsey Bennett last month “really annoyed” her.
“The way it is going, there doesn’t seem to be any change in the policy or the attitude or the treatment of women,” she said.
“What really annoyed me about Lynsey’s case was we had had a case just a couple of months previously with Patricia Carrick where there had been an apology and an admission of liability by the HSE – the first time that had happened since my case.
“I really thought, OK here we go, they are finally accepting liability and responsibility for this and apologising.
“Then Lynsey’s case comes along and there is no apology, no admission of liability and this bloody letter of regret and I just thought, we are going backwards.”
'Remember, mammy loves you' - Lynsey Bennett's emotional message to her daughters after settling cervical smear case
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— NewstalkFM (@NewstalkFM) February 3, 2021
She said there is a “bit of a narrative beginning to creep back in” suggesting that the women affected by the CervicalCheck scandal “were just unfortunate to get cancer and you can’t blame the system.”
“That really, really annoys me to be honest because in my particular case, my missed slide was not a false negative, it was absolutely medical negligence,” she said.
“It was negligently misread. There was so much cancer on the slide at the time, a competent screener could not have missed it – that is the difference between a negligent slide and a false negative.
“When there is plentiful cancer on the slide and the screener should have been able to read it, that is negligence in anyone’s book and that is what really bothers me about all of this.”
Apology
She said the State apology delivered by then-Taoiseach Leo Varadkar in the Dáil in 2019 never meant a lot to her because she never felt it was sincere.
“To be honest, I was very on the fence about the State apology in the first place,” she said. “Lorraine (Walsh) and Stephen (Teap) really spearheaded that.
“I went along with it because I thought it would be good for other women but I certainly didn’t need the apology because I never thought it was sincere to be quite honest.
“I remember watching Enda Kenny giving the State apology to the Magdalene Laundry women and look what has happened with that since.
“State apologies don’t really mean a whole lot in my book to be quite honest, I think they are done to try and get the story out of the news a lot of the time.”
CervicalCheck
Ms Phelan said the Government had its opportunity to ensure no more women would have to go to court over the scandal while it was setting up the CervicalCheck Tribunal.
“They did not listen to us, they would not take our suggestions on board and as we now know there have been no applications to the tribunal – surprise, surprise,” she said.
“We withdrew from that negotiation process at the time because we were not getting anywhere with it. What can you do when the people who are setting up these tribunals will not listen to the women and families affected?
“What can you do? Nothing is going to change if they don’t listen to the people who are most affected by all of this.
“That is why we withdrew from it. We were getting nowhere and the tribunal is no different and no less adversarial than the High Court no matter what Stephen Donnelly or anyone else tries to say. That is just the fact of the matter.”
Ms Phelan said she has had an “up and down few weeks” since arriving in the US for treatment – noting that she is “feeling good toady again” after being admitted to hospital on Valentine’s Day.
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