Breastcheck and the National Screening Service have publicly apologised to a Tipperary family for their part in the death of a Clonmel woman.
Kay O’Keefe passed away in May 2017 having battled breast cancer for 3 years.
By the time she was diagnosed in June 2014, her cancer was already incurable.
Today in the High Court, Breastcheck and the National Screening Service, admitted liability for failing to detect abnormalities on two consecutive mammograms, taken in 2011 and 2013
Tipp TD Alan Kelly had previously raised the case with then Health Minister Simon Harris and at the Oireachtas Health Committee.
The Labour TD was with the O’Keefe family in the High Court today.
“They had her mammograms in 2011 and 2013 – these are looked at by two people on each occasion. So four people in this scenario didn’t see that she had cancer. The admission today by Breastcheck and the National Screening Service says that obviously there was something catastrophic from a process point of view that happened here. But the O’Keefe family want lessons to be learned and I’m going to ensure into the future that they are learned.”
Alan Kelly says there are still questions to be answered.
“I raised this with Breastcheck and the National Screening Service on the 23rd of May 2018. They knew what I was talking about – they knew that they had a case here which they would need to deal with. And what I really want to know from them is not have they learned from today – have they learned from the time that this happened? If they have will they outline what they have learned and how they’ve ensured such catastrophic errors in process will not happen again and have not happened since.”
