The Chief Medical Officer tonight offered his sympathy to CervicalCheck victims, but didn't apologise when asked by reporters.
Dr Tony Holohan said tonight that "a very significant harm was done" to women affected by the fiasco, admitting a "failure" on the part of the HSE when it came to communicating with those impacted.
The CervicalCheck episode – which saw over 200 women develop cervical cancer after receiving a misdiagnosis from Ireland's smear test programme – re-emerged this week after a mum of two settled her case with the HSE.
Lynsey Bennett sobbed outside the High Court after the settlement, which came after she developed cervical cancer despite four smear tests telling her she was negative.
Asked if he wished to apologise to Ms Bennett, Tony Holohan said he was "not aware of the facts of the particular case", adding: "I know there was a settlement, but I don’t know any of the details."
Pushed on whether, as the Chief Medical Officer, he wanted to issue an apology to the women affected, Dr Holohan said: "The State, as you know, and the Taoiseach, in the past on a number of occasions has apologised in relation to what has happened.
"A very significant harm has been done to people who’ve had the experience over the last number of years.
"The harm at the centre of CervicalCheck was that there was not disclosure to women of the findings of a retrospective clinical audit of their care, where there was a commitment to give that information back to individuals.
"The information wasn’t in fact given to those individuals. There was very significant hurt for those individuals."
Dr Holohan – who said there "were not findings in terms of adverse functioning of the programme" – admitted: "These women had every reason to believe that this information would be shared. It wasn't shared.
"The failure in respect of this particular programme was the failure to honour a commitment to those women, that wasn't lived up to.
"It was something that simply shouldn't have happened."
