Last reviewed: June 2026. This is general information, not legal advice. Every case turns on its own facts.

Many women were never told. When a CervicalCheck audit later found that an earlier smear had been read wrongly, the result was often not passed on. That failure to tell you is a distinct wrong, separate from the misreading itself, and it can form part of a personal injury claim in Ireland.

This page explains how non-disclosure of an audit result is treated in Irish law. It covers what the Supreme Court decided in Morrissey v HSE, and how the Patient Safety Act 2023 changed your right to be told. If you are weighing up whether to pursue compensation for injury in Ireland, the starting point is understanding what you should have been told, and when.

What the CervicalCheck audit was, and what went wrong

The audit was a retrospective review of earlier smears, and the failure was not telling women what it found. CervicalCheck operated a Cancer Audit Review. When a woman with a history of screening was later diagnosed with cervical cancer, her earlier smears were re-examined to see whether they had been read correctly at the time.

The audit re-examined 1,482 cervical cancer cases that had been notified to CervicalCheck ^[7]. It found around 221 women whose earlier smears had been misread, an error rate that should have prompted scrutiny of laboratory practices ^[7]. Dr Gabriel Scally's scoping inquiry identified a deeper problem. There was no system to check whether women had been told their old smears were being audited, or whether they wanted the result ^[6].

A second, independent review by the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) later examined 1,038 women who consented ^[11]. It disagreed with the original CervicalCheck result in 308 cases, and in 159 of those the panel considered the result had an adverse effect on the woman's outcome ^[11]. The two reviews are often confused, but they are separate exercises with separate figures.

In April 2018 the HSE confirmed that 206 women had developed cervical cancer after a CervicalCheck smear that an audit later found should have led to different action ^[5]. Of those women, 162 had not been told that their results had been audited, or that a different result was warranted ^[5]. Twenty of those women had already died before the truth emerged ^[19].

The controversy began when Vicky Phelan refused to sign a confidentiality agreement and went public. That is what brought the scale of the non-disclosure to light ^[5].

Who the disclosure duty covered

The CervicalCheck Tribunal Act 2019 defined exactly who could claim for non-disclosure ^[12]. It named three groups:

• women whose audit findings were discordant with their original result
• women whose slides could not be re-examined through no fault of their own
• women identified by the RCOG review as having a discordant result

The wrong it described was the failure to inform the woman, or her dependant if she had died, of the results of the retrospective CervicalCheck cytology clinical audit ^[12].

The original CervicalCheck policy left disclosure to the treating clinician rather than to the woman directly, which is where the system broke down ^[6]. If you are checking your own position in Ireland, four points matter:

• whether an audit of an earlier smear was carried out
• whether you were told of it in writing
• the date of any notification
• whether the result was given to you or only to your doctor

How to find out if your smear was audited

If you are diagnosed with cervical cancer after screening, you should be asked whether you agree to an audit of your earlier slides. Where a woman is diagnosed with cervical cancer and had screening within the previous ten years, the service should seek her agreement to review the earlier screening histology ^[16]. The review is then discussed at a colposcopy multidisciplinary team meeting, and your treating doctor receives the result. The doctor then writes to ask whether you wish to be told it ^[16].

The review and disclosure are meant to be completed within twelve months of diagnosis, though in practice it often takes longer ^[16]. You also have a standing right, under the HSE open disclosure policy, to request a review of your cancer screening results and to be told the outcome ^[17].

If you want to check your own position, you can contact CervicalCheck in Ireland on Freephone 1800 45 45 55. You can also confirm your details on the screening register using your PPS number and date of birth ^[17]. Women affected by the controversy are also supported by the 221+ Patient Representative Group, set up in 2018 to assist those harmed and their families ^[18].

The duty to disclose: Morrissey and the non-delegable duty

The Supreme Court confirmed the HSE remains responsible for CervicalCheck even where testing was outsourced. The governing authority on this open disclosure failure is Morrissey & anor v Health Service Executive & ors [2020] IESC 6 ^[2]. It was a unanimous five-judge Supreme Court decision delivered on 19 March 2020.

Ruth Morrissey's smears in 2009 and 2012 were reported as clear. After her 2014 cancer diagnosis, those smears were audited and found to have been read incorrectly. The audit results reached CervicalCheck by 2015, but were not disclosed to Ms Morrissey until 2018, when she made her own enquiries ^[2].

The Supreme Court held that the Dunne principles ^[1] remain the test for clinical negligence. It also held that the HSE owes a non-delegable duty to CervicalCheck patients, so it stays primarily liable even though the laboratories were independent contractors ^[2].

The disclosure failure was dealt with separately from the misreading. The High Court (Cross J) awarded €2,152,508 against all three defendants for the misread slides. It awarded a further €10,000 in nominal damages against the HSE alone for failing to notify Ms Morrissey of the audit results ^[2]. The award was nominal because the court held the late telling caused no further physical injury on these facts, a distinction we return to below.

Open disclosure under the Patient Safety Act 2023

Open disclosure became a legal requirement on 26 September 2024. The Patient Safety (Notifiable Incidents and Open Disclosure) Act 2023 was commenced by S.I. No. 482/2024, which appointed that date for the Act to come into operation, other than section 68 ^[4]. Before this, open disclosure in Ireland was largely voluntary, a gap Dr Scally had criticised as leaving no compelling requirement on clinicians to disclose ^[6].

The Act makes open disclosure of specified serious incidents mandatory for public and private providers. According to the HSE, a provider can be fined up to €5,000 for failing, without reasonable excuse, to hold a disclosure meeting ^[3]. Part 5 of the Act gives patients a statutory right to request a review of their cancer screening. It also obliges the screening service to tell patients of that right and to disclose the completed review ^[8].

There is an important practical caveat about how this right is structured. Under Part 5, a person is informed of their entitlement to request a review before or after screening, rather than at the point of a later cancer diagnosis ^[8]. This means the onus can fall on the woman to ask, which is why knowing the right exists matters.

So while the statutory right is in force, whether it delivers timely disclosure of historical audit findings in practice remains contested. We set this out so you can see both the legal position and the live debate around it in Ireland.

How non-disclosure founds (or strengthens) a claim

Non-disclosure is a recognised wrong, but its value depends on what the non-disclosure caused. Where a smear audit was not disclosed, a claim in clinical negligence still needs a duty, a breach of that duty, and harm caused by the breach. The duty to disclose an audit result is clear after Morrissey. What decides the value of a non-disclosure claim is causation, meaning what the failure to tell you actually caused.

Where the late telling itself caused additional harm, the claim is strongest. Examples include a lost opportunity for earlier treatment, a distinct psychological injury from how or when disclosure was made, or a loss of chance argument tied to the delay. Where the non-disclosure caused no further injury on its own, as the court found in Morrissey, it may attract only nominal damages. In that situation it is best pleaded alongside the underlying misread-smear claim rather than on its own.

A practical note from running these files. The decisive early step is fixing the date you were told of the audit finding, because that date, not the smear date, usually starts your two-year period. Establishing it precisely often rescues a claim that looks out of time when measured from the original smear.

Ex-gratia payment, nominal award, or a full claim

Three different things have been described as compensation, and they are not the same. Confusing them is common, so it helps to separate them clearly before deciding what applies to you.

The ex-gratia scheme is worth understanding in its own right. It opened in 2019 on the recommendation of an independent panel. According to gov.ie, it paid €20,000 to each woman in the 221 audit cohort whom an Independent Assessment Panel found had not received appropriate and timely disclosure ^[13].

The panel was chaired by a judge, sitting with a clinician and a person of good standing. Its terms recorded that the non-disclosure did not delay or affect the treatment given ^[14]. That is the key point, because the scheme paid for the wrong of not being told, not for any change to the medical outcome.

Receiving the ex-gratia payment does not automatically extinguish a separate claim where negligence and causation can be shown. The three routes answer different questions, so the right one depends entirely on your facts.

What this means for your claim today

Cervical-screening claims now proceed through the High Court, and time limits turn on when you knew. The CervicalCheck Tribunal, set up as an alternative to court, was formally dissolved on 30 January 2026 under S.I. No. 19/2026 ^[9]. Very few women used it, and it made no awards before closing ^[10].

Claims are now brought in the High Court, and unlike a standard injury claim they do not go through the Injuries Resolution Board. The report that founded the Tribunal stressed that a missed result does not by itself mean negligence. A no-fault redress scheme was rejected because liability still has to be proven ^[15].

The limitation period is two years less one day, but it runs from your date of knowledge. In audit cases that date is usually when you learned of the audit finding, not the date of the original smear. If you have only recently been told that an earlier smear was audited, your two years may run from that point. Because the date can be finely balanced, it is worth checking early rather than assuming a claim is too old.

How we can help

If you were not told that a CervicalCheck audit found an earlier smear was wrong, you can speak to a solicitor about whether you have a claim, with no obligation. As personal injury solicitors in Dublin acting for clients across Ireland, we handle cervical-screening and disclosure cases with care and discretion. We will tell you honestly whether the facts support a claim.

A first step we often take is requesting your records and establishing the precise date you were told of any audit, because that date frames everything that follows. You can read more about the wider cancer misdiagnosis claims we handle, or contact us for confidential advice.

Common questions

Related guides: cervical cancer misdiagnosis · cervical screening negligence · the CervicalCheck Tribunal explained · consent failures · date of knowledge