Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions
Dail Éireann — 2026-01-14
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Micheál Martin (FF), Cork South-Central

First of all, I thank the Deputy for raising this issue, which is an extremely important one. Obviously I am not familiar with the background of the specific case she has referenced just now. If she wishes to send me the details of the case, with the permission of the person concerned, I perhaps will be in a position to interrogate the issue more with the NCCP, which is the national cancer control programme, and indeed with the HSE and the hospital. We have invested very significantly in cancer care.
Cancer is a very traumatic diagnosis for any individual or family and, obviously, given the levels of investment in our services, we want the best possible outcomes. Thankfully, over the last number of decades, we have improved outcomes of cancer diagnoses significantly, particularly in terms of breast cancer. Breast cancer survivors are now the largest cancer survivor group in Ireland, making up 22% of all cancer survivors. Almost 50,000 women have had a breast cancer diagnosis. That does not mitigate or take from the trauma that the individual person the Deputy referred to this morning has experienced.
As the Deputy knows, there have been a variety of new treatments, new drugs and so on for cancer. We have invested significantly in all of that. In the last three to four years, close to €650 million has been invested in new drug therapies for cancer alone and the radiation-oncology centres have been established and so forth.
On the waiting times, symptomatic breast disease clinics operate in approximately nine hospitals around the country - the eight cancer centres and a satellite clinic in Letterkenny. The HSE national cancer control programme, NCCP, has set a target of 95% of urgent referrals being seen within ten working days and 95% of non-urgent referrals to be seen within 12 weeks. To date, 62% of urgent referrals have met the timeframe of ten working days. That needs to improve. Of that, there is no doubt. In October, three cancer centres - St. James's Hospital, University Hospital Waterford and University Hospital Limerick - exceeded the 95% target for urgent referrals. An additional three centres - St. Vincent's, University Hospital Galway and the Mater - reported that they expected to meet the target by the end of the year. Galway, which I think is the hospital involved in this case, has said to the NCCP that it expects to meet the target by the end of 2025. Certainly, if the Deputy sends me on the details of the case, I will pursue that with the hospital and the NCCP because the NCCP is working with various hospitals in terms of restoring the service within the agreed timeframes. When there is a particular performance issue, the HSE works with the hospital on site-specific measures. That could mean funding additional clinics or additional medical cover, where necessary.
In terms of the variation across the country, the NCCP has introduced a range of guidelines aimed at ensuring standardised access to cancer services across the country leading to more appropriate referrals within cancer services. It is examining the national symptomatic breast disease pathway, including triage, review of key performance metrics and updating the national clinical guidelines.
We need to work out the specific issue here because University Hospital Galway, I have been informed, has indicated it would be on target by the end of last December-----

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-01-14/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:30+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-01-14