The seven women whose breast cancer diagnosis at the Midland Regional Hospital in Portlaoise was delayed have been badly let down by the State, the Irish Cancer Society said yesterday.
John McCormack, its chief executive, said there was an enormous amount of anger around and rightly so "at the way these women have been so badly let down by the State".
He said the news that the women had been diagnosed with breast cancer following a review of their files was devastating for the women concerned.
"It's difficult to imagine the trauma this is causing to them and to their families. It does challenge confidence in the system."
Mr McCormack said early diagnosis of cancer was important, and if women were concerned about any test results they should return to their GP.
Rebecca O'Malley, a mother of three from Co Tipperary, who discovered this year that her breast cancer diagnosis was delayed for 14 months, said she had hoped her misdiagnosis was an isolated incident. However, to find out now that the diagnosis of seven other women had been delayed was shocking.
"Clearly I'm not the only case. There are seven other women now who will be feeling shocked, angry, depressed, terrified, their lives will have just stopped, and their family life will change hugely as they have to deal with whatever treatment they will be getting.
"I think what will be consuming them will be what will the effect of the delay be on them."
Fine Gael TD for Laois Charlie Flanagan said the disclosure was deeply disturbing.
"Great personal sadness and trauma has been visited upon these women and their families."
He called on the HSE to publish the report of the review of mammograms at the Portlaoise hospital at the earliest opportunity.
Labour's health spokeswoman, Jan O'Sullivan, said the news was truly shocking and would cause enormous stress and trauma to the women and their families.
"This is just the latest in a growing number of incidences where patients, and especially women, have been badly let down by our health service and exposed to the risk of serious illness and possibly death.
"There is now clearly a need to review a system where the result given can depend on the individual judgment of one individual expert, and there should be procedure that all tests are double or even triple checked."
The Health Information and Quality Authority has confirmed it has begun a review of breast cancer services across the State.
Christine Murphy-Whyte, chairwoman of Europa Donna Ireland, said the scale of misdiagnosis in Portlaoise was highly disturbing. It underlined the absolute necessity of having centralised specialist breast centres where triple assessment and the expertise of multi-disciplinary teams is on offer.
"Anything else is simply not up to international standards and will lead to error."