David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

What is the point in having a strategy? That was said to us today. If we are just going to have a strategy that is a document with words on a page into which goes a great deal of work by people in this room, which I do not doubt. I do not blame the people in this room, as a huge amount of work goes into it. Yet the funding is not there. We also hear a related issue on a lack of data collection which also hinders progress. We hear very strong criticism in relation to monitoring not being robust and being vague. It is not just the national cancer strategy but the national cancer strategy is really important. It runs from 2017 up to 2026. There have been seven budgets. It got adequate funding in two, inadequate funding in five and zero for 2024.

Then we have the Irish Cancer Society saying it is not confident that cancer outcomes for patients will improve. That is a very serious consequence of that funding not being made available.