Ms Rachel Morrogh:

I might address the Deputy's first question and talk about the data issue. With regard to the diagnostic delays, we concur with everything Dr. Colleran said about needing to make sure the services are there once people initially seek that medical advice. The issue with the Covid-19 pandemic is they have not been taking that first step. They have not been going to their GPs. When we look at the number of cancers diagnosed in rapid access clinics last year, they are about 6% below where we would expect them to be. With the annual increase in cancer, which is around 4%, we are probably down around 10% in cancers diagnosed, as Ms Power outlined in her opening statement.

These are real people. When we see there are 800 fewer attendances at prostate cancer rapid access clinics and 300 fewer attendances at lung cancer rapid access clinics, as Dr. Colleran stated, they are people who are at home at the moment and who, out of genuine goodwill towards the healthcare professionals, do not want to burden them. We did ask the question in research. Respondents stated they did not want to take away from the Covid effort that healthcare workers have been so caught up with over the past year. Earlier in 2020, one in four people told us they would not have gone to seek healthcare, even though they may have needed it. That statistic is still one in six people. We last ran the research in May, so we know there are still issues that we, as a community, need to address and encourage people back into healthcare. That will have an impact on the number that Ms Power described in respect of missed cancers that have not been diagnosed yet.

The data that Ms Powers used are some of the only data we have. We do not have eyes on any of the other cancers, aside from those being diagnosed in the rapid access clinics. That leaves us in a really vulnerable position when we are talking about solutions. What is the actual problem? I do not know that anybody can provide the answer to that question. For example, we cannot have targeted solutions that are needed to get head and neck cancer patients into the system because we do not know about the diagnosis rates. That is extremely troubling.

With regard to data, there are things we can do, such as adopting the individual healthcare identifier. Things that have already been progressed need to be accelerated because we need those data to inform policy responses.