Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the delegations and thank them for their presentations.

There has been a lot of talk about the impact of Covid on cancer services and the increasing numbers of undiagnosed cancers, which are concerning but also distort what is happening to a certain extent. I wish to discuss the pre-Covid period. We saw in the media today a report by the National Cancer Registry Ireland, NCRI, on what happened up to 2018. There were a lot of positives in the 2018 report in terms of incidence rates going down and survival rates improving. One of the most negative aspects from that report was the fact that progress does not seem to have been made with health inequalities. The report showed that low-income cohorts are 28% more likely to die from cancer than more affluent cohorts, which is a worrying figure. It seems that the figure has stuck at that level for some time and no progress has been made in respect of the disparity between people, based on how much they have in their pocket. What does the HSE believe are the main reasons for that? What is being done to address the issue?