‘STATE HAS TO BE BRAVE LIKE VICKY’ Amnesty chief calls on the nation to ‘right its wrongs’
THE father of Vicky Phelan said he feels “so lonely surrounded by so many” since her death.
The mother-of-two, originally from Mooncoin, Co Kilkenny but who lived in Annacotty, Co Limerick, lifted the lid in 2018 with a High Court case in 2018 over how her cervical smear tests were handled after the HSE outsourced them to a US firm.
The 48-year-old was awarded €2.5m in damages but without admission of liability by the HSE and she refused to sign a non-disclosure agreement prior to the hearing.
Ms Phelan was diagnosed with cervical cancer in 2014, three years after a smear test she had was wrongly reported as clear.
Report
Her case prompted more than 220 other women to come forward over misreported smear test results and led to several reviews of the State’s cervical cancer screening programme, CervicalCheck and a damning report by Dr Gabriel Scally who said it was “doomed to fail”.
Following a tribute by the Support for Nurses, Midwives and Frontline Staff in Ireland on their Facebook page, Vicky’s father John Clarken said his family had received so many “beautiful tributes” about his daughter.
The Facebook tribute said: “The powers that be had met their match in Vicky Phelan. She fought to the very end to stay alive for as long as she could and she fought to the end for every person in Ireland who was and who could be failed by our health service. In doing so she saved hundreds of lives.”
Vicky’s dad responded: “I never thought you could feel so lonely surrounded by so many...but for all the beautiful tributes we have received, this is a very special one.”
AMNESTY chief Colm O’Gorman has praised the late Vicky Phelan, who exposed the CervicalCheck scandal.
He also called for the nation to become more courageous about facing the terrible wrongs that have been done.
Mr O’Gorman said: “We must become a much more courageous society and a much more courageous state.
“For heaven’s sake, over the next two weeks please do not accept any nonsense that comes from commentators and politicians about concerns about the scale of this.
“The concerns about the scale of this should not be about the cost or complexity, it should be purely about the level of harm and trauma that is being done and continues to resonate in peoples’ lives and families, including across generations.
“We must not minimise the harm for fear of the consequences of naming that harm; be that what we have to confront as a society.
“The cost of these violations and meeting these violations and meeting these violations in compensation terms…they are a fraction of the kind of money that the State turns around to address other concerns.
“We need to get to grips with this. We need to start being courageous.
“We really have to be much braver as a people, we really do.”
Mr O’Gorman has also called for a full independent inquiry with powers of discovery into the Spiritan sex abuse scandal.
Frightening
The call came after the former Archbishop of Dublin Diarmuid Martin called for a similar investigation after describing the abuse at Blackrock College as “frightening”.
Mr O’Gorman, the founder and former director of the One in Four organisation, said he was barely able to sit through the recent RTE documentary which exposed the scandal at the fee-paying colleges run by the Spiritans.
The executive director of Amnesty International Ireland, who is also a clerical abuse survivor, told RTE’s Brendan O’Connor that the State must also shoulder the responsibility for the damage done to children.
He said: “How are we here 20 years on? Because people who knew and had a responsibility to something about what they knew failed to do so and that obviously is the Spiritans.
“This State has an obligation to guarantee truth, justice and reparations to victims of human rights violations.
One priest joked: “All the prayers in the world can’t save us from the taxman. We all have to make a tax return this time of year.
“Being a priest is the only job in the world where you are technically self-employed yet you effectively work for a big organisation and have no employment rights.”
Even the bishops have to cough up, and they are also regarded as selfemployed.
The Catholic Press Office said: “Funding of the Catholic Church in Ireland is based on the generosity of the faithful’s tradition of voluntary financial contributions.
“Charity is a fundamental Christian value.”