CervicalCheck patient advocacy and files
Mary Lou McDonald pressed the unmet promise of an independent patient advocacy service and raised continuing problems for CervicalCheck women, including access to medical files and an incomplete slide review. The Health Minister said the Department was engaging directly, had a steering committee with advocates, and asked for any ex gratia payment issues to be sent to him.
Page 62 of the programme for Government commits to the establishment of an independent patient advocacy service and this has not been met. Last Saturday, there were rallies throughout the State standing for women in support of the victims of the CervicalCheck scandal. Despite all of the pronouncements and announcements from the Taoiseach and others, serious issues remain for the women affected and for their families. Women are still being forced through the courts to access their medical files; they are being denied their own files. The essential review of 3,000 cervical smear slides has not begun. The final report of the scoping investigation being conducted by Dr. Gabriel Scally is delayed and women are also having terrible difficulty accessing the €2,000 payment that the Government announced. All of this signals that the Government is not serious about fully addressing this scandal or drawing lessons from it. The Taoiseach might be aware that Vicky Phelan and Stephen Teap last weekend called for an independent patient advocacy group to be established specifically for these women and their families. It strikes me as a bare minimum and a very practical idea. Will the Taoiseach make the funding and resources available so this advocacy resource can be afforded to the women and their families?
Comment on this
I thank the Deputy for raising this. We are directly interacting with people who have been impacted by the CervicalCheck situation. As the Deputy probably knows, we have established a steering committee within the Department of Health. It meets every Thursday. It publishes its minutes, agenda and all other documents on my Department's website. On that group we have two advocates, including some of the people the Deputy referenced. With regard to any difficulty accessing an ex gratia payment, I would be grateful if the Deputy would forward me the details directly because it is contrary to the information I have received and to the published documentation from the minutes of the meetings. We will fund the advocacy service and we have conveyed that directly to some of the advocates involved.