This book aims to position the Irish State's response to the 'CervicalCheck debacle' of 2018 in the context of previous accounts of women's struggles for autonomy, redress and justice across the history of the modern Irish State.

The 'CervicalCheck debacle' refers to revelations that the State had failed to disclose to women that they had received false-negative test results. These errors, which were communicated to the women's doctors, but not to the women themselves, resulted in the failure to detect the presence of pre-cancerous cells in screening for these women, who all later developed invasive cervical cancer. The State investigations that ensued revealed that the screening programme was characterised by myriad governance and oversight failures.

Considering the State's response to the CervicalCheck scandal alongside other accounts of institutionalised gendered injury in Ireland, this book shows patterns of moral and epistemic hierarchisation throughout the extraordinary history of gendered institutional harm that characterises Irish history in the 20th and 21st centuries.

This approach illuminates some of the naturalised contradictions in the CervicalCheck debacle, highlighting the injustices that women experienced throughout, and how these injustices were discursively suppressed and minimised by the State. It also provides greater understanding of the discursive mechanisms that insulate the State from true accountability, despite the evident persistence of a gender bias through Irish political and medical institutions.