Annie Hoey (Labour) | Oireachtas source

Ahead of this session, I spoke to some GPs to get their sense of, and thoughts on, how things are going. One of the people I spoke to gave me three sentences: Covid-19 has massively impacted our ability to diagnose cancer; Covid-19 has massively impacted our ability to treat cancer; and Covid-19 has impacted our ability to prevent cancer. It is not that the first two are okay, but we kind of understood them. What really struck me was the point that Covid-19 has impacted our ability to prevent cancer. Could anybody offer a commentary on that? Beyond diagnostics and delays, it is concerning that prevention, which is so important, has been affected.

I have only two questions. My second relates to how GP access to diagnostics is at sea. The Irish Cancer Society report alluded to this. The winter initiative was cancelled. That was supposed to provide free scans to GMS-eligible patients in private facilities. This sort of initiative has been revoked. Could anybody involved in this offer a commentary on it? The person I was talking to referred to the need for publicly funded access to radiology services and a possible need to decouple the public resource. We have got demand-soaked hospital settings. When cancer is properly diagnosed, it is very hard for community services to access hospital-monopolised diagnostics. Has anyone any thoughts on that? My question is based on the comments of some of the GPs to whom I have spoken.