The solicitor who represented Vicky Phelan in her landmark legal action has paid tribute to the late cervical cancer campaigner for putting “truth and honesty above everything else”.
Tipperary-based solicitor Cian O’Carroll, who represented the Kilkenny woman in her 2018 legal action against a US laboratory and the HSE, paid tribute to Ms Phelan’s “many practical achievements”, saying that she was “such a force for good and such a force for saying that truth and honesty are important.”
The settlement of Ms Phelan’s High Court action later led to the revelation that more than 200 women diagnosed with cervical cancer had also received incorrect smear test results from Cervical Check and that they had been kept in the dark about a screening programme audit showing that the tests had been incorrect.
Mr O’Carroll said that “making sure other people found out the truth” was the most important thing for Ms Phelan in her campaigning and that this improved the health system.
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Ms Phelan knew there were other women affected and that she did not sign a non-disclosure agreement in her own legal action because she wanted them to get the truth of their own cases, he said.
Initially she thought 14 others were affected, said Mr O’Carroll, and she knew two women in that group had died but that their families did not know about the audit of smear tests.
A subsequent independent investigation by public health expert Dr Gabriel Scally found that at least 221 women diagnosed with cervical cancer were not told about the audits showing misreported smear tests which could have alerted them to the early stages of cancer.
“She put truth and honesty above everything else and she waved a banner saying that truth and honesty is important and people followed that banner,” said Mr O’Carroll.
“That is what people were impressed by; it was the idea that ‘I am not going to do anything which is in my self-interest because it is going to cost other people truth and knowledge.’”
The solicitor said Ms Phelan looked back on her life towards the end and saw that her finest achievement was her family: her husband Jim and her children, Amelia (16) and Darragh (10).
“It was just the mark of her generosity that she was able and willing to give so much of the time, which she knew was limited and was precious, to the rest of us and to Irish society to try to make things better. She still managed to ensure that her family was the principal recipient of her time and love,” he said.
“She just had tremendous energy and was obviously a brilliant communicator. People came to trust her and love her. Those extraordinary qualities just happened to come together in that person who was then able to use them so brilliantly for the good of others.”
