A firm established by public health expert Dr Gabriel Scally has been paid €1.13 million for its work on the CervicalCheck screening programme scandal.
New figures provided by the Minister for Health, Stephen Donnelly confirms that last year the Department of Health last year paid Gabriel Scally Consultants Ltd €159,129. This followed payments totalling €445,843 in 2019 and payments of €529,157 in 2018, according to a written Dail reply to Labour party leader Alan Kelly.
Dr Scally - who currently enjoys a high media profile in his commentary on the Government response to Covid-19 - established Gabriel Scally Consultants Ltd in June 2018 and accounts for 2019 show that the company recorded a profit of €136,788 for the year and had accumulated profits of €203,681 at the end of December 2019.
CervicalCheck report
Dr Scally is the author of the State’s report into the CervicalCheck controversy and the report reviewed revelations that hundreds of women had not been informed of an audit of their cervical smear tests after being diagnosed with cancer.
The inquiry was set up in May 2018 after terminally ill Limerick woman, Vicky Phelan settled her High Court case for €2.5 million over being given incorrect smear test results.
However, Dr Scally’s work didn’t stop at the publication of the report. The Government accepted all 50 recommendations made in Dr Scally's Scoping Inquiry into the CervicalCheck Programme, which was published on September 12th 2018.
Implementation plan
An implementation plan was published in December 2018 and the then Minister for Health, Simon Harris requested Dr Scally to undertake an independent review of the Implementation Plan.
Dr Scally was requested to undertake a further implementation review, and this took place in late 2019. The report of this review of the implementation of the recommendations of the scoping inquiry into CervicalCheck was received by the Department in April 2020.
The review was published last December and Mr Donnelly stated: “In this review report, Dr Scally says that substantial progress has been made, the vast majority of actions were on track or were completed, and he is satisfied with the approach and structures in place for implementation.”
The Minister for Health said Dr Scally is also a member of the Crowe Consultancy team in place to provide an evidence review and to make recommendations for a Policy Framework for Open Disclosure in Healthcare in Ireland. Crowe has completed its work after submitting their report in January and the report is to be published on the Department website.
