Vicky Phelan has said the Health Minister has apologised after he was accused of ignoring her and fellow cancer campaigners' concerns about a CervicalCheck tribunal.Stephen Donnelly had proposed the tribunal into the handling of the CervicalCheck controversy get underway on Tuesday.
However, Ms Phelan and members of the 221+, the CervicalCheck patient support group, said their concerns around the adversarial nature of the process and the statute of limitations are being ignored.
Speaking on Newstalk, she said the group spoke to Mr Donnelly about the situation last night and that they had a "fairly frank exchange of views"."I mean he was apologetic about the way the communication had been communicated to us, that was not his intent," said Ms Phelan, "He said his only motivation is to find the least bad way forward, those are the words he used for the women and families concerned.
So we had a fairly frank exchange of views because we are all used to seeing this happen time and time again.
"Poor communication from the Department and then apologies and we're just sick of it now at this stage, to be honest.
"So we have given them until next week to take on board issues that we have already raised," she added.
Earlier this week, the CervicalCheck campaigner criticised the Health Minister after it was announced that the long-awaited CervicalCheck Tribunal will begin next week.
Stephen Donnelly had brought a memo to Cabinet proposing October 27 as the start date for the tribunal which will investigate negligence in the State's cancer screening programme.
The tribunal was intended to be established by the end of March 2020 but this was delayed due to Covid-19.
At a Zoom meeting with Mr Donnelly and Department of Health officials six weeks ago, the group outlined aspects of the proposed tribunal that were a cause of concern.
Ms Phelan said the response earlier this week was "a flat rejection of all of our concerns".
The group had asked for a non-adversarial route to be found for the tribunal, one that wouldn't oblige women to fight the laboratories involved in the screening scandal.
