Ireland's reports by Daniel Doval

'No' sign on Ben Bulbe. RTE.IE  Next Friday Irish people will vote YES or NO in the abortion referendum. According to the last polls, the Repeal side is going to win, but there's now lots of undecided voters that can change the result. These days the campaign is taking place in the media and also in the streets of Ireland. In some places like in the capital city the result is nearly clear . " Like the rest of Dublin, the NO side will always be playing against the wind here” said one NO campaigner in an Irish Times report this week. Also the big lobbies or pressure groups are dealing with the people's vote. The most important of those is the catholic church. “ Christians must be pro-life when it comes to the unborn and those who are vulnerable at the end of their lives, the Eighth Amendment would be a point of no return. Proposed future legislation would permit abortion wi...

The Health Service Executive knew in 2016 about smear test errors and planned about a strategy to response for hypothetical headlines like “screening did not diagnose my cancer”. Three memos about this issue were written in 2016 and the main objective of those were create a “communications protocol” to protect the reputation of the HSE smear test program. The memos can be sum up in 4 points: Pause all the letters to the women affected; await advice of solicitors; decide on the order and volume of the letters dispatch to mitigate any potential risks and continue to prepare reactive communications response for the future media headlines that now appears in TV, radio and newspapers. Finally HSE director general Tony O’Brian resigned last Thursday after the pressure that ask him for leave. Also, the Taoiseach Leo Varadkar talk in a video published in the social media about the measures that government will take including medical cards to all women and provide some practical sup...

Give me a chance to tell you a self experience fact related to today’s post. I work in a store that sells newspapers (and more things), and the last week some of the main newspapers were sold out when the normal situation is that 2 or 3 of each one remain in the store until we close. I didn’t ask my customers the reason, but all the headlines this week were related with the cervical cancer test scandal. Now 209 irish women are affected by the same problem that Vicky Phelan suffers. Last year she discovered that the exam results that she received in 2011 were wrong and now she knows that she is now suffering from terminal cancer. It is said that fear is the big enemy for everyone and that’s the feeling that a lot of irish families are having. According to and Irish Times information “More than 10.000 women have contacted a helpline established by the cervical check screening program to ask if their test would possibly be affected with the same issue." The most...