Ms Averil Power:

As Professor Kennedy said, they are probably harder won than when we had massive, basic problems in our health service. We were able to make those leaps faster. There is enormous potential in cancer because of the scale of the pace of medical and scientific progress and the improvements from things like the HPV vaccine. We now have a whole form of cancer, that is, cervical cancer, which is preventable. Hopefully it will be eradicated in the coming years. There is more potential to be able to prevent more cancers in the future and to have far better, more personalised and effective treatment. We are seeing that all the time with personalised medicines, improvement in targeted therapies, immunotherapies and gene therapies. The potential from new treatments is incredible but the challenge is that they are not getting to Irish patients. The ones that are available right now are not getting to Irish patients. We have the second slowest access to new medicines in Europe. We are way behind in this regard, let alone having the confidence that the newer ones coming down the road will give to Irish people.

The Senator mentioned that thousands of lives have been saved as a result of the first two national cancer strategies. That is amazing and it shows investment in cancer works. Our frustration is that many more would be saved if our outcomes were up there with places like Finland and Spain, which are leading on the cancer front. Germany has the fastest access to new cancer drugs. If Ireland was performing at the optimum and had properly resourced services, multi-annual funding and properly staffed services, there would be countless Irish people who would still be with us today and many more into the future.

As I mentioned at the start, one in two of us will get cancer in our lifetimes and we deserve to know that when that happens, we will get the best possible chance of surviving it. The reality is that, right now, we are not, whether that is due to lack of investment or otherwise. That is why we want to underscore that message that if we were up there with leading countries, more Irish people would be surviving and thriving after cancer. That is still possible. I am conscious that when we have these hearings, we dwell on the negative. It is our job to come in, as a national cancer charity, to highlight where we are behind, but there is also enormous hope and potential within cancer. It is just a case of making sure that the resources are there for us to realise that potential and to save more lives.