Paul Donnelly (Dublin West, Sinn Fein)
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556. To ask the Minister for Health the total number of persons who attended lung rapid access clinics in each month of 2023, in tabular form. [5535/24]

Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail)
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The rapid access assessment services for Symptomatic Breast Disease Clinics, Rapid Access Lung Clinics and Rapid Access Prostate Clinics operate in each of the eight designated cancer centres, with one additional breast satellite clinic. These clinics provide a streamlined pathway to diagnostic evaluation and specialist review for these three major cancers. It is important to note that these are symptomatic patients being assessed for suspected cancer, the majority of whom will not be diagnosed with cancer.

All new patients attending symptomatic breast disease and rapid access lung and prostate cancer clinics are clinically assessed and undergo one or more diagnostic test, as clinically indicated. However, not all breast, lung and prostate cancers are diagnosed through the Symptomatic Breast Disease and Rapid Access Clinic services. While it is estimated that almost all symptomatic patients attending public hospitals and subsequently diagnosed with breast cancer are diagnosed via the symptomatic breast disease clinics, only about half of all lung cancers and a third of prostate cancers are diagnosed via the rapid access route.The most up to date information available for the total number of newly referred persons who attended lung rapid access clinics in each month (January to August inclusive) of 2023 is given in Table 1 below.

Table 1 The total number of newly referred persons who attended lung rapid access clinics (January to August inclusive) in 2023. Please note, due to the current Fórsa action impacting on the data returns for this period it is not possible to collate complete data relating to the months September to December 2023