Redress scheme likely in cervical cancer controversy

The Government is preparing proposals for a redress scheme for women affected by mistakes in cervical cancer screening but is concerned that the costs of the affair could rise to hundreds of millions of euro.

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar confirmed yesterday that a redress scheme was under consideration, saying that "perhaps mediation is not the holy grail or panacea that we thought it was a few months ago".

“I certainly had much more confidence that we could settle all cases through mediation thus avoiding a court trial, but it has become evident to me that may not be the case, so we need to explore other mechanisms, other alternatives to going through the court process,” he said.

Because by stepping in we're exposing the taxpayer obviously to the full cost if we're unable to pursue the labs

However, there is growing concern in Government about the potential costs of compensating the women affected. One senior source speculated that the total cost would rise to hundreds of millions, while another suggested the figure could be as high as half a billion euro.

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While Mr Varadkar confirmed that all 221 women affected by the controversy will qualify for some compensation, he declined to accept legal liability for all the cases taken against the State and the testing laboratories.

Mr Varadkar said the results of the expert reviews commissioned by the Government were needed to establish whether there was negligence in each case.

“We can’t confirm that there is negligence until we have those reports,” Mr Varadkar said. It was “not proven”, he said, that there was negligence in the vast majority of cases.

‘Compassionate’

Mr Varadkar said the Government was “trying to find a way that is compassionate but does distinguish between false negatives which are negligent and those that aren’t”.

The State could not intervene in legal actions, Mr Varadkar said, until it knew the extent of any negligence and therefore liability.

“Because by stepping in we’re exposing the taxpayer obviously to the full cost if we’re unable to pursue the labs so we would need to know that we had sufficient grounds to pursue the labs thereafter,” he said.

However, the Government is also concerned that if liability is transferred to the screening laboratories, it could endanger the entire cancer screening programme - the preservation of which remains a high priority.

Mr Varadkar is to meet with Vicky Phelan this morning.

“I mainly want to hear from her,” he said, “seek her advice and her thoughts as to have we can best achieve what we all want to achieve – which is trying to have a system of redress and compensation that avoids women having to take the stand in court, restoring confidence in the CervicalCheck screening programme and making sure we get to the truth and the facts.”