Brendan Smith (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

It has been a heartening and uplifting meeting and I compliment each of our witnesses. Their commitment to their patients and professions comes across in every utterance they have made. I wish them well with the very important work they carry out on behalf of our society. As was said in the AICRI's introduction, unfortunately none of our families have avoided the scourge of cancer through death and illness. It is a subject that is of huge importance to all of us. I also want to say that the message to the committee and the wider public is that politics works. The existence of the Good Friday Agreement allowed this co-operation to start in the first place with memorandums of understanding and then funding being accessed for the PEACE PLUS programme. We have moved on to the shared island initiative of an Taoiseach, which will be crucial in supporting the AICRI's work on an all-Ireland basis in the future.

Mention was made of the EU cross-border health directive, which has been replaced by the Northern Ireland planned healthcare scheme since Britain left the European Union with the same processes in place. That has been established on an administrative basis and in the new year there will be legislation going through the Oireachtas to put it on a statutory footing. The AICRI might advise the committee on the need to facilitate trials under that particular scheme and we could try to advance that on a cross-party basis when the legislation is being discussed in the Oireachtas.

As a long-serving member of Dáil Éireann, I am glad we are talking about the provision of cancer services on an all-Ireland and transatlantic basis and across the European Union, and as has been said, it is hoped further afield in the area of research as well. I was a member of Government in the mid-2000s when we began a programme of rationalisation of small cancer services in most of our county and regional hospitals. There was a huge opposition to that but it was the right thing to do and to have services provided where there could be a multidisciplinary team in place. Some of us got a hell of a lot of abuse at that time for backing the proposals to rationalise and provide a better service in fewer hospital settings. That has worked and naturally there is room for improvement, but alongside that development we had developments like chemotherapy being delivered in Cavan General Hospital. We could not have had that in the past were it not for the linkages with the Mater hospital and Beaumont Hospital, and I am sure that is replicated in other places throughout the country. We want to see more of that being done when it is feasible to do so.

US President Biden referenced this work and the AICRI during his St. Patrick's Day meeting with an Taoiseach. He did not reference that off the top of his head because speaking notes would be prepared for such a meeting and those would have gone through his senior personnel and health officials. That showed the eminence he holds for the work that is being done by the AICRI on an all-Ireland and transatlantic basis, and it is heartening to hear that.

When I first had contact with some of the witnesses and heard of the development of the AICRI, I thought the idea was to have a new building and stand-alone facility. I was delighted to learn that was not the case and that it was using existing partners, not just in research institutes or universities but in hospitals, which are an essential part of research and medicine. When we saw the presentation it showed how many partners the AICRI has working together in collaboration. It is a model of what can be and what is being done daily to bring about improvements we all want to see in cancer care.

The themes I took from today's meeting and from all the contributions were the patient being at the centre and equity of access. Those are important and essential messages around the delivery of healthcare. As an island it makes sense and it is heartening and progressive that we are working on an all-Ireland and transatlantic basis, particularly with the United States. I refer to Stephen Farry's question about collaboration at a European Union level, and perhaps Professor Lawler will come back on this. Years ago when Mr. David Byrne was Ireland's EU Commissioner, among his responsibilities at the time was health. He argued strongly at that time that health needed to be an EU competence because so many challenges were coming up and so much needed to be done that countries could not do with their own competence alone. One of the witnesses mentioned the global effort to develop a vaccine for Covid earlier, which has been successful. Today we are talking about a booster vaccine after more than 90% of our population has had its second dose. That shows the success of science, the importance of the global effort and of governments throughout the world putting the necessary funding into such work.

I refer to the following initial comments of our witnesses on the vision of the AICRI, "We will become a global leader in cancer research and, as a result, we will give much needed hope to patients with cancer and their families." It is a heartening message and it is to be hoped those of us in public life as well as the public at large would hear that message. I wish the witnesses luck in the important work they do on behalf of all of us.

We want to support the witnesses in their work.