Cancer Services
Dail Éireann — 2026-01-22
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Jennifer Carroll MacNeill (FG), Dún Laoghaire

Across 2025, in Beaumont Hospital, where many patients would be referred, 80% of urgent breast cancer referrals were seen within ten working days and 98% of the non-urgent referrals were seen within 12 weeks. It sounds so impersonal to talk about the metrics, but you have to look at how everybody is experiencing it and not an individual to see how we are doing over time. In December 2025, Beaumont Hospital increased its capacity for urgent outpatient slots by ten per day to try to clear any backlog. In addition, nearly 1,500 breast-imaging studies have been scheduled to be performed at evenings and weekends. We are trying to use all the resources we have, including the physical buildings and the diagnostic equipment in those buildings, in the best way. I have seen the new CT machine in Beaumont Hospital. I am assured by the region that it is an absolute priority to ensure the staffing is there for that in 2026.

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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/dail/2026-01-22/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:32+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-01-22