Mr. Michael Conroy:

I will come in here if I may. Before answering that question, I wish to point to screening in the context of early diagnosis, which is a major part of the programme.

Under the previous cancer strategy, surgery was centralised in eight designated cancer centres based on a population of 500,000 per centre, roughly. That is considered to be one of the major successes of the previous strategy in terms of outcomes. It is a proven fact that where one has cancer surgery carried out by surgeons who have experience of doing a lot of surgery alongside other surgeons who are also doing a lot of surgery, it works to the benefit of patients. That is accepted internationally.

On Sligo and Donegal, I have had numerous interactions with people from Donegal about cancer services. Breast cancer is the major cancer in terms of numbers for surgery and treatment and cancer surgery is carried out in Letterkenny University Hospital.