MINISTER OF State for Health Áine Brady has apologised on behalf of the national cancer screening service for implying that Clare County Council was responsible for delays in the provision of breast screening in the county.

Information Ms Brady read out in the Dáil three weeks ago suggested the county council required planning permission for the location of a mobile digital screening unit in Ennis, Co Clare.

“This was incorrect,” Ms Brady said yesterday. “As a result the impression was given that Clare County Council had been responsible for delays in the provision of breast screening in Co Clare.”

Ms Brady said she made the statement in good faith.

She said the “cancer screening service has confirmed that planning permission was not required at any time by Clare County Council and indeed the county council is providing a site . . . in Ennis for the mobile unit”.

She said the service “has been in contact with the Clare county manager to express its regrets for any offence or embarrassment caused”. Ms Brady told the Dáil the service “and Clare County Council look forward to working together to ensure the provision of the BreastCheck service as now scheduled for autumn 2010”.

The issue had been raised by Clare Fianna Fáil TD Timmy Dooley who acknowledged that BreastCheck did good work “but that is cold comfort to the vast majority of women in Co Clare to whom the service is not available”.

He said breast cancer services in the county had been reconfigured to the centres of excellence in Limerick and Galway but while women in Co Clare accepted that, they were left waiting for the rollout of BreastCheck.

Women in north Clare had gone to Galway and Limerick since August 2009.

Since the previous year a complete rollout of the service “for the rest of the 8,000 women in the county,” had been promised but that had not happened.