One of the 68 women incorrectly told that their cervical smear test results were normal has said she has lost confidence in the whole screening system as a result of the blunder.
Ms Anne Moy, a schoolteacher from the village of Ardara, Co Donegal, said she was unable to go to work yesterday because of the distress.
She was visited by her GP at 5 p.m. on Tuesday and told she would have to have another test, as rechecking of her original test had shown that she was a "borderline" case.
"To be honest, that means nothing to me. At this stage I don't know what to believe. I feel let down by the health board and feel very angry that I am only being told this now."
Ms Moy said she was very annoyed that nobody was taking responsibility; that "an anonymous laboratory" was being blamed. She believed the North Western Health Board was to blame for giving the work to an external laboratory.
"No one seems to be accountable. I feel the person accountable is the one who authorised the tests to go elsewhere. It is not good enough - when people go to the trouble of getting the test done, they expect the procedure to be valid."
Ms Moy said she had the smear test done in September 1997 and she did not get any results for months. "I kept going back to the health board for ages and they told me there were no results available. So eventually I gave up on it. I felt that if there was any problem I would be notified of it."
At the time Ms Moy had her test done, a 16-week backlog of samples was building up at the laboratory at Sligo General Hospital. Because of this backlog, the health board contracted the work out.
Ms Moy said that while her test was found to be borderline, she felt sorry for those women - 13 of the 68 - where more abnormal cell changes were detected. "It is a terrible situation that a year-and-a-half has passed and it is only now that it might come to light, and only now that I could be getting follow-up treatment."
She said she believed a three-page information sheet given to her was "inappropriate" because it was not addressed to her personally, was not on headed paper and was not signed by anybody in the health board.
Meanwhile, it has been stressed that women should not be discouraged from having smear tests done. A study mentioned in the last edition of the British Medical Journal found that smear testing saved 800 lives in the UK in 1997.
A Sligo-based doctor said he has received a lot of calls from anxious women, who were not directly affected. Dr Jimmy Devins said it was important to remember that the test shows cell changes long before they become malignant. Even when a high degree of abnormality was detected, treatment was 100 per cent effective.
Dr Devins said "every woman should have smears done at regular intervals."