Ms Averil Power:

I thank Senator Conway for mentioning our good friend, the late Laura Brennan, and the amazing work she did on increasing uptake of the HPV vaccine. It is amazing that we have a vaccine that can eliminate a whole form of cancer in a generation and that we can get rid of cervical cancer and stop women like Laura and other young women tragically losing their lives. We feel very passionately about making sure that every young girl and young boy, now that the programme has been extended, avails of the vaccine. It is so important that we get back to school-based vaccination, which is probably the easiest in terms of increasing uptake.

I agree we should also be looking at pharmacists and other areas, and at anything we can do to make vaccination convenient. I was at a talk recently with a vaccine expert from the WHO who said that we sometimes think about vaccine hesitancy but it is not that people are hesitant about getting the vaccine, it is just that it is not convenient enough, particularly for those from disadvantaged areas, and that any extra burdens such as having to travel can be the reason they do not get it. Therefore, getting back to a school-based system is very important.

With regard to our funding, as the Senator knows, we had to cancel daffodil day at short notice last year, which was very challenging for us and also for our amazing volunteers, who look forward to doing it every year to raise funding for people affected by cancer in their community. However, it was also amazing for us to see the strength of the Irish Cancer Society community across Ireland, in that people came together and found new and interesting ways to raise money for us. While our income was down by €2 million last year, we were also buoyed up by the work people put into doing virtual events and how well daffodil day did this year. That means we have been able to restart some of the things we had to pause during Covid, although there is so much more that we need to do. There are a lot of strengths in the fact we are funded by the public and we get such enormous public support. It gives us a lot of independence. During the pandemic, we were able to innovate, change and introduce new services faster than some of our counterparts who work in the public health system because of that flexibility. However, we are always open to more State funding for some of our core services so we are able to pilot new things and support our medical colleagues in trying new things.