Rose Conway-Walsh (Mayo, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The witnesses are all very welcome. I was glad to hear Ms Mulroe acknowledge at the beginning the fantastic work of Professor Paddy Johnson and the key role he played in the signing of the memorandum of understanding with the National Cancer Institute in the US. It is because of him we can have the discussions we are having today. Our own Bairbre de Brún worked at the very beginning of the All-Ireland Cancer Consortium in establishing that MOU when the Executive was established in 1999 and it is important to acknowledge all of that.

I have a number of questions. Do we have a central portal for the sharing of this information? We saw with Covid that we can speed everything up. We can protect the integrity and we can make things happen much quicker. While everybody is in that frame of mind we need to harness that collaboration and communication our witnesses have talked about. How do we speed it up? How do we support the submission they have made to have the resources to do what they need to do?

I really want to talk to them about the educational opportunities around all that. It was mentioned we have 40 oncologists at the moment and need 80. It is about how we actually do that in higher education. We have the Department with responsibility for higher education and the institutes. Are there opportunities there for the technological universities, for instance, with Mayo University Hospital, University Hospital Galway and Magee College? How do we make it work and what part do we as parliamentarians need to urgently play across the island to ensure that happens? How do we do it throughout the life cycle in terms of education? There have been wonderful oncology nurses. What prevents them from being oncologists and what are the blocks and the barriers we need to undo there?

We recently saw there are blocks to the implementation of Sláintecare. I want the witnesses to use this forum in honesty to tell us whether there are blocks there that need to be removed. Is there pushback or are we all on the same page? It is important that if there is pushback we address it at this stage. The frightening thing was one of the slides said four out of ten cancer patients are not getting their chemotherapy.

How big of a problem is it that we do not have the beds there in the hospitals? I hear of stories where there are wonderful professionals, clinicians, and oncologists but if they do not have the beds then they are always going to be limited in what they need to or can do. Lives are put at risk because of that. There is a great deal there but perhaps in answering questions from the other members, our witnesses may be able to include some answers into those of mine.