Sadness in Kilkenny following death of 'intrepid, inspiring and courageous' Vicky Phelan

More than four years after she was told she had 12 months to live, Vicky Phelan’s intrepid inspiring and courageous life has ended.

She had prepared to an exceptional degree for her death, even to the point of organising her own funeral ceremony.  

But for more than four years, she had also fought for each and every extra day,  fierce in her desire to see another sunrise and another sunset, until it was her last. That day came this Monday morning, November 14 when she died, at Milford Hospice in Limerick.

For her children Amelia and Darragh and their father Jim, her family and her great many friends, there is a heartbreaking sadness and loss  which they will carry to the end of their own lives.

But with her death, also, one of the most intrepid and searingly honest voices of a generation has been stilled, one that was not afraid to speak truth to power as she campaigned to expose the debacle within the CervicalCheck programme and sought redress for those affected, but remained  always a voice that was warm and engaging and unremittingly human. And she did it for her children and for the women of Ireland and because she could only be true to herself. 

“In her steadfast refusal to be silenced, Vicky Phelan has surrendered her anonymity and has become a national voice for the voiceless. In doing so, she has given immeasurable service to this country.”

So said Vicky’s alma mater when she was conferred with an Honorary Doctorate at the University of Limerick in 2018. 

It was the first in a number of awards, including Kilkenny Person of the Year and the Freedom of Limerick, for which she was honoured for uncovering one of the biggest medical scandals of the decade, in which Vicky, along with  over 220 other women with misdiagnosed smear tests were not informed about them until several years afterwards. 

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Their cancers could have been mitigated or preventable but the delay in informing them about the audit proved fatal to many, among them Vicky, Emma Nic Mhathúna and Ruth Morrissey. 

The timeline of the disaster that befell Vicky Phelan began in 2011 when her smear test returned a false negative but three years later, she was told she had cervical cancer and needed treatment. Had the 2011 result been accurate  a hysterectomy would have been her best option.

Instead she  underwent radio-chemotherapy and given the all-clear but by 2017, the cancer had come back. 

In January 2018, Vicky was  told she has 12 months to live. A week later, she discovered  some of her medical file was missing. It set her on a journey  which secured her place in history as an activist for Irish women.

She sued the HSE and the Clinical Pathology Laboratories which carried out the original smear test and along the way discovered that an audit carried out in 2014 had found that her results and that of at least ten other women were not correct. Yet she was not told about the audit results until 2017. 

In April 2018, she refused to settle her case out of court because it would mean she would have to sign a non-disclosure agreement. When, some weeks later, the court found in her favour and awarded her €2.5m.

Vicky Phelan made national headlines when she stood on the steps of the High Court and excoriated the CervicalCheck service and its part in shortening her life. 

“There are no winners here today. I am terminally ill and there is no cure for my cancer. My settlement will mostly be spent on buying me time and on paying for clinical trials to keep me alive and to allow me spend more time with my children. 

"The women of Ireland can no longer put their trust in the CervicalCheck programme. Mistakes can and do happen but the conduct of CervicalCheck and the HSE in my case, and in the case of at least ten other women that we know about, is unforgivable.

"To know for almost three years that a mistake had been made and that I was misdiagnosed was bad enough but to keep that information from me until I became terminally ill and to drag me through the courts for my right to the truth is an appalling breach of trust.”

Our good friend Vicky Phelan has died in the early hours of this morning at Milford Hospice in Limerick.

Our deepest sympathies to Vicky's family and friends, may she rest in peace. pic.twitter.com/X5LcvbbiVI

— The Late Late Show (@RTELateLateShow) November 14, 2022

It was to be the beginning of an extraordinary campaign, revealing facts that appalled and horrified the nation as the number of women affected grew to over 220.

It forced the government to set up an  enquiry under Dr Seamus Scally and to make the drug Pembro available as a treatment to women suffering from cervical cancer.

But a key demand that no woman would have to go before the court for redress was never satisfactorily met and Vicky Phelan was unrelenting in her criticism of the Tribunal  proposed by the government. 

Over the years 2018 and 2019, Vicky became a household name, but in continuing to investigate available treatments and to take  part in clinical trials, she also encouraged and empowered women, by her  example, to take control of their own health. 

Her book, Overcoming, written with Naomi Linehan, gives the best insight into the woman she was and had become. As she says herself, “Everything that happened to me, made me become me. “ 

That life began in her beloved County Kilkenny on October 28, 1974,  where she grew up, first in Ballygorey and then in Mooncoin, the first of five children born to Gaby and John Kelly.

She attended the local national schools and the local Vocational School and in 1993 enrolled in UL. The following year, while on co-op in France, she had her  first brush with tragedy when her French boyfriend Christophe and her friend Lisa were killed in an accident and she and two other friends were seriously injured. 

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In 1997, she graduated with a first class BA in European Studies from the University of Limerick and went on to register as the very first research student at the newly established Centre for Applied Language Studies.

She later took up an appointment with the university’s  International Education Division where her main role was to manage the Erasmus programmes.

In 2004 she moved to the Waterford Institute of Technology where she was to become Director of Literacy Development. The Institute, in 2018, conferred her with an honorary fellowship. 

She married Jim Phelan in 2005 and together they raised their two children, Amelia and Darragh, in Annacotty but also, for a time, in County Kilkenny. Jim and Vicky were later to separate as a couple but remained together and remained close until the end. 

Following the campaigning years of 2018 and 2019, Vicky underwent different regimes of treatment, both in the US and here at home. And through media interviews, social media and her book, she was enfolded  by the Irish nation and became lodged in our hearts. 

Her wish, after death, was to become one with the sea again, to have her ashes scattered in the Atlantic and on the golden sands of Donoughmore. Then, she wrote: “I will be at peace. And I will become part of the sea once more.”

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Her own words, written in 2019, say it all. “Whatever happens next, I know that my struggles will not have been in vain. Everything that happened in my life, happened to make me, me. And in the end, I hope that my life will have meant something. It will have been worth something.”

She was right.