@Jay Coleman: Don’t be fooled by Kelly! The only reason he did not give in on privatising our water was that his brother was CEO of Teneo, a company buying up water companies around the globe?

@Eoin Scanlon: claimaints will always end up in court when claiming massive damages.The amounts being sought here because the Govt is under pressure are eye watering. State should defend itself on behalf of the taxpayer. It is only negligent on the communciations delay not the lab issues. If a claimant wished to berate the govt then they should state how much they are claiming. As a taxpayer I do not want a blank cheque handed over.
Opposition politicians making a political issue out of this will end up closing down the screening programmes due to the claims awarded which will cost lives.
There is no evidence our screening any less standard than international norms.

@Seamus G: So you would prefer for the women effected to crawl into a hole and die quitely so your pocket as a taxpayer isn’t affected at all. You are a heartless government pimp.
This is what happens when vital public services are privatised. Or hived of to a private company so money can be saved. The public suffer.
These women have been handed a death sentence they done nothing to deserve. What cost do you put on the lives of these women, and what they are about to go through through no fault of their own? The government deserves everything that’s comming to it.
FG, Leo, Simon do what FG do best, they Lie Through Their Teeth on every issue that effs up when the public are effected.

@Dave Doyle: you are telling me what I prefer? Your statement around privatisation of the service ehre has not been confirmed. If the service was not contracted out at the time scores more cervical cases would not have been picked up.
You rant away emotively though if it makes you feel bit better. As for the death sentence statement – you need to educate yourself about screening.

@Seamus G: Straight out of the Michael Noonan handbook on how to deal with issues of such grave importance to ordinary citizens.

@Seamus G: Rant? No, nothing like your rant about being a taxpayer. The service was tendered out to save money. The result is 19 women have died, more are waiting to die, others have no idea where they stand.
Feel better? Not at all i feel angry at what has been done to these women. I feel angry that once again the public have been lied to by Leo and Simon. FG have made a virtue out of lying. Nothing will ever change there.
I don’t need any education on the problems of privatising vital public services and the consequences of doing so.
You could do with some education on empathy, and less about worrying about your pocket.

@Seamus G: You have no idea whether that is what the state is only negligent in because the smear tests are currently being reviewed in the UK to look for negligent misreads of those smears.

If those exist then the state was absolutely negligent when it failed in their duty to recognise that companies they employed to do a job, were negligent and the massive errors which caused the deaths and serious injuries to the women involved were allowed to continue happening until Vicky Phelan refused to be gagged.

@Linda Nolan: I never dipsuted that Linda and fully agree. Nobody knows if that is the case yet. All I am saying is that a false negative does not necessarily indicate negligence. Oncologiest across the country are fearful for the programmes if false negatives as opposed to negligently read tests automatically attract a payout. The ranters on here couldn’t be bothered trying to read behind the headlines here.

@Seamus G: Eh, which is it?

“claimaints will always end up in court when claiming massive damages.The amounts being sought here because the Govt is under pressure are eye watering. ”

The women involved were told by Cervical Check that errors were made, some women have already settled because those errors were found to be negligent

The amounts being sought are to reflect the serious damage done to these women – I mean death is something that you never recover from.

@Eoin Scanlon: Leo tells lies all the time ask any doctor or an self employed person who was told by Leo at a press conference they can now get illness benefit paying an S prsi stamp. They cannot because this government and Leo never passed the legislation. He like a child eating an ice cream promising us all one but. Cannot give it to us because it will melt. He should go.

@Dave Doyle: actually if every woman with a false negative test gets millions unfortunately we will not be able to afford it. The problem is people do not understand that while this test saved many lives through early detection , it will miss a proportion of cancers.

@paul kelly: There is no compensation payable for “false negatives”. I really wish that people would try and distinguish between negligence and false negatives.

@paul kelly: The women aren’t looking forward to a painful early death just because a government wanted to save money. Most of them have young families that they will never see grow up. No amount of money will compensate the women,their children, or their husbands when the die.
As for trying to say that this is the normality in screening tests, you’re talking through your hole. Or is this the next bit of government spin on the issue? They’ve been trying to hammer the spin that homelessness is normal. Now you want us to believe that screening that misses the signs of cancer is also normal. It’s no such thing. It’s incompetence and carelessness by the lab doing the screening. Chosen because they were cheap.Not because they are competant.
It’s a pity you’re not a woman waiting to be told whether the lab got the test right. You would be banging a different drum then.