Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I do not wish to detain people, but because some of the questions refer very much to policy, I should respond to them. The way to view National Cancer Registry Ireland is as a Central Statistics Office for cancer. It is meant to be the body that knows all about all types of cancer and the learnings that can be developed from that information. Deputy Alan Kelly referred to this issue and I want to be very clear on it. How we ever got to a situation where one of our cancer screening programmes did not get its data from the registry but seems to have told some people that it did and this seems to have gone on for years and years is beyond me.