THE MAIN Opposition parties are to seek a Dáil debate next week over what Fine Gael has described as a cover-up of a warning provided to the then minister for health, Micheál Martin, six years ago about cancer services at the Midland Regional hospital in Portlaoise.
The letter from local surgeon Peter Naughton highlighted a shortage of consultant staff for the breast unit in Portlaoise, including a radiologist with a special interest in mammography.
The Department of Health had told The Irish Timesin response to a Freedom of Information request that no such letter existed.
Minister for Health Mary Harney had also told the Dáil that she was unaware of such correspondence.
However, at a meeting of the Oireachtas Health Committee yesterday, a senior official of the HSE said she had a copy of the letter in question.
Fine Gael health spokesman Dr James Reilly said his party would be demanding that both Ms Harney and Mr Martin answer questions in the Dáil next week about why the letter could not be found in the Department of Health and on whether the official file had been tampered with.
"The letter to Micheál Martin of April 30th, 2002, points to the absence of a consultant radiologist with a special interest in breast radiology, as does the Doherty report [on the recent cancer controversy in Portlaoise]. The question that must now be answered is, if the warnings that were flagged up had been acted on, would the misdiagnosis scandal that happened in Portlaoise have come to pass?" he said.
Labour Party leader Eamon Gilmore said he would find it hard to believe a letter of such importance would not have been put before Mr Martin in 2002.
"Unfortunately Micheál Martin has a track record as minister for health for failing to read documents and briefs. His failure to act on documents warning him that the then regime of nursing home charges was illegal ended up costing the taxpayer tens of millions of euro. In this case his failure to act on the warning from Mr Naughton may well have endangered the health and even the lives of women in the midlands," he said.
Ms Harney said the Department of Health had been unable to find the letter from Mr Naughton to Mr Martin.
However, she said that a number of months after the letter was written, the department had approved the appointment of three additional consultants with a number of conditions such as the establishment of multidisciplinary teams. She said these conditions were not met.
An official close to Mr Martin last night said the Minister was not denying that he had not read the letter from Mr Naughten.
However, the existence of the letter was "immaterial" since Mr Martin would have met "three or four times" with Mr Naughton and other midlands medical staff about local services, the official said, adding: "There is nothing in the letter that would not have been said at meetings, so there is no question that there was a warning in it that was ignored."
Mr Martin, during his time in the Department of Health and Children, was closely involved with efforts to improve cancer services in the midlands. However, the Hollywood report which recommended that services in the midlands be centralised in Tullamore met with violent opposition from other midland counties.
In a three-hour appearance before the committee, Ms Harney defended the Health Service Executive and again said she would not be resigning over the Portlaoise controversy.
The Minister said she believed HSE management had the capacity to make sure that the problems identified in the reports on the Portlaoise controversy were put right. Without a unified health service delivery system in the form of the HSE, it would not have been possible to have eight designated centres of excellence for cancer care, she said.
HSE chief executive Prof Brendan Drumm said he had absolutely no disagreement with comments made by Dr Ann O'Doherty, author of one of the reports on the controversy.
Dr O'Doherty said there had been a high level of misdiagnosis of breast cancer in Portlaoise.
She said that approximately 1 per cent of women who attended a good centre experienced a delay in diagnosis even with the best equipment and expertise, and some cancers were extremely difficult to detect.
However, she said that the figure for Portlaoise was 6 per cent.
She said her report may have been responsible for some of the confusion as it stated that the level of false negatives found at the hospital had fallen within the rates of false negatives published in similar reviews.