Cancer scandal protest planned for Simon Harris’s home town

Protests over the CervicalCheck screening controversy have been planned this weekend in Dublin and in the home town of Minister for Health Simon Harris – Greystones, Co Wicklow.

Public anger over the failure to tell women diagnosed with cervical cancer that they had received false negative smear tests which missed cancer warnings is bringing people on to the streets in two protests.

A group called Protest Cervical Check has organised a protest outside Dáil Éireann in Dublin on Saturday at noon, while locals in Greystones will meet on Sunday at 2pm at the South Beach Car Park beside Wicklow County Council offices to protest at the healthcare failures and apply pressure to seek greater accountability.

“We are a group of Irish women disgusted and saddened at the CervicalCheck scandal,” said the Protest Cervical Check group in an email.

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“We have been left scared at the thoughts of young women dying, leaving families and friends behind by a completely preventable situation.”

The Greystones community group has said it hopes the protest in the Minister’s own constituency will raise awareness of the public anger among the political classes.

“I just feel that women in Greystones have a responsibility of some sort because we are in Simon Harris’s backyard,” said Chris Allen, a local women helping to organise the march.

‘Absolutely sick’

“We are hoping that there will be an understanding that people have had enough of it. That there are husbands and children left to manage without a wife or mother. We hope it will lead to a new understanding.”

Another organiser, Orla Leonard, a mother of two, said the marchers are not affiliated to any political cause but a group of local women were “absolutely sick at the the way that the HSE is run” and at the failure to tell women with cervical cancer about the false negative tests years after audits showed they were incorrect.

“We want to get vocal and try to let the politicians know that we won’t forget about it,” she said. “Greystones is a pretty relaxed little place but people are furious and want to vent their anger now and let Simon Harris and other politicians know that we want better and that mothers have died needlessly and they actually tried to cover it up.”

The growing public pressure on the Government comes as the Opposition politicians intend to press HSE and Department of Health officials in further Oireachtas committee hearings on Wednesday and Thursday as the official scoping inquiry led by Northern Irish public health veteran Dr Gabriel Scally continues its work.