Dr. Gabrielle Colleran:

On the first point regarding the data on delays in diagnosis, my colleague, Professor Seamus O'Reilly, who is a medical oncologist in Cork, spoke very well on this during the week. There is good data coming out of the United States on the impact of the Covid pandemic on cancer diagnosis and it is expected the delays will impact mortality for over a decade. As Ms Power articulated earlier, the reality is that because cancer develops over a period of time, it will take up to a decade for us to see the impact, but we know that up to six months of an impact has been shown to have an impact on morbidity and mortality in the US. We have had longer than that here and, of course, our access issues and our capacity issues are worse than they are in other countries; for example, we have the longest waiting lists in Europe. Therefore, it is reasonable to expect that the impact will be worse here but, without concrete figures, I do not think it is fair to speculate other than to say that, unfortunately, the impact is real and we will be seeing it for over a decade. That is why it is key that we implement the cancer strategy in full and put in the additional resources to address the backlogs so we can try to minimise that. We cannot change what has happened up to now but we can impact the future by taking proactive measures now.

We agree strongly that HPV vaccination for our young boys and girls is the way we are going to eradicate cervical cancer, regressive throat cancers and head and neck cancers for the next generation. Therefore, we do not want any delays because those teenagers can get exposed to HPV and have that risk of progressive cancer in the interval. Of course, in the context of the Covid pandemic, given we do not have enough staff and resources and staff had to be redirected, that was one of the areas affected. What is key now is that we get the catch-up. We are looking for solutions like those suggested by the Senator and those innovative, "think outside the box" solutions, using any potential spare capacity. There rarely is spare capacity but we have to use every bit that we have to get that catch-up in place so we do not see the knock-on effect for those teenagers. As Dr. Nóirín Russell has said, we want to be like Australia and looking at eradicating cervical cancer for the next generation.