An tOrd Gnó - Order of Business Seanad Éireann — 2026-01-21 ============================================================ Fiona O'Loughlin (FF), Administrative Panel Our guests are most welcome. I hope they have an enjoyable day. Today sees the start of TradFest in Dublin. It is the largest folk and traditional music festival. It is really important in celebrating Irish cultural identity and I recommend that people get to many of the events. One of the things that is really notable about TradFest is that it partners with AbleFest, which is the largest inclusive musical festival and which will be run over two days at the National Stadium. It provides a place for neurodiverse children and adults, with their friends and families, to enjoy music in the way many others can. Well done to TradFest for organising that. I wish those concerned the very best of success over the next few days. I extend sympathy, on behalf of the Fianna Fáil grouping, to the family, friends and co-campaigners of Ziva Cussen, who was a very powerful campaigner for breast cancer awareness. She worked tirelessly through an advocacy group that she set up, Too Young To Be Heard, to amplify the voices of breast cancer patients. Despite her own illness, she remained very focused, right to the end, on helping others. Targeted cancer prevention and early diagnosis are essential in helping and supporting those who unfortunately have a predisposition towards cancer or indeed a diagnosis of it. OECD data show cancer mortality rates in Ireland are falling faster than the EU 27 average rate and than those of our economic peers. That is really important. My county, Kildare, has the second-highest positive rate of having come through cancer. That is also important. However, there is a particular element I want to highlight. It concerns those who have to undergo mastectomies and who, for a myriad of different reasons, cannot go through reconstruction at the time. When there is a delay, there should be a system in place to ensure treatment for the patient does not end until reconstruction has taken place. I am dealing with somebody who has been waiting for five years. She has been moved from one hospital to another. The process started again only 18 months ago. Most definitely, we need to have a system in place. I would like to see a debate on this issue in which delayed reconstruction is seen as as part of the whole treatment process. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-01-21/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:31+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-01-21